STROBE-MR: Guidelines for strengthening the reporting of Mendelian randomization studies
Author and article information
Abstract
While the number of studies using Mendelian randomization (MR) methods has grown exponentially in the last decade, the quality of reporting of these studies often has been poor. Similar to other reporting guidelines such as CONSORT (Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials) for randomised trials and STROBE (STrenghtening the Reporting of Observational studies in Epidemiology) for observational studies in epidemiology, the STROBE-MR working group aims to provide guidance to authors on how to improve reporting of MR studies and help readers, reviewers, and journal editors to evaluate the quality of the presented evidence.
Empirical evidence indicates that many reports of MR studies do not clearly state or examine the various assumptions of MR methods and report insufficient details on the data sources, which makes it hard to evaluate the quality and reliability of the results. The STROBE-MR guidance covers both one sample and two sample MR studies. At present, the draft checklist consists of 20 items, organized into the title and abstract, introduction, methods, results and discussion sections of articles.
As these guidelines aim to reach the entire MR community, we would like to give everyone the opportunity to contribute their comments. The following draft of the STROBE-MR checklist is open for public discussion and all feedback will be taken into account during its next revision. For feedback, please use the comment section below this post on PeerJ Preprints.
We hope the final guidelines will serve the entire community and contribute to improving the reporting of MR studies in the future.
Cite this as
2019. STROBE-MR: Guidelines for strengthening the reporting of Mendelian randomization studies. PeerJ Preprints 7:e27857v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.27857v1Author comment
The following draft of the STROBE-MR checklist is open for public discussion and all feedback will be taken into account during its next revision. For feedback, please use the comment section below this post on PeerJ Preprint.
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Competing Interests
Authors have no competing interests.
Author Contributions
George Davey Smith authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Neil M Davies authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Niki Dimou authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Matthias Egger authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Valentina Gallo authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Robert Golub authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Julian PT Higgins authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Claudia Langenberg authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Elizabeth W Loder authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
J Brent Richards authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Rebecca C Richmond authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Veronika W Skrivankova authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Sonja A Swanson authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Nicholas J Timpson authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Anne Tybjaerg-Hansen authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Tyler J VanderWeele authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Benjamin AR Woolf authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
James Yarmolinsky authored or reviewed drafts of the paper, approved the final draft.
Data Deposition
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
Not applicable.
Funding
This work is funded by institutional funds from the Universities of Bristol and Bern and by special project funding (Grant No. 174281) from the Swiss National Science Foundation. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
