Meta-Analysis of Guanylyl Cyclase C Agonists for IBS-C: Efficacy and Safety from 9 RCTs

Zihao Zhou's systematic review and meta-analysis, uploaded to figshare on 2026-04-10, evaluates the efficacy and safety of linaclotide and plecanatide for irritable bowel syndrome with constipation. The analysis includes 9 randomized controlled trials involving 5,718 patients, comparing drug treatments against placebo. Results include relative risks for FDA composite endpoints and diarrhea incidence.

Use Cases

• Compare relative efficacy of linaclotide and plecanatide based on FDA composite endpoint results.
• Assess safety profiles by analyzing relative risk of diarrhea across different drug dosages.
• Validate statistical methods for meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials in gastroenterology.

Strengths

• Analysis is based on 9 randomized controlled trials, a standard for clinical evidence.
• Includes data from 5,718 patients with IBS-C, providing a substantial sample size.
• Uses FDA-approved composite endpoints as the primary outcome measure.
• Results include specific relative risk values and confidence intervals for multiple drug dosages.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset is a single 18.0 KB DOCX file, suggesting limited raw data scope.

Provenance

Source

Systematic review by author Zihao Zhou, registered with PROSPERO (CRD420251168079).

Collection Method

Meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials identified via systematic search of PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Library, Web of Science, and ClinicalTrials.gov.

Time Range

Search timeframe spans from database inception to 7 September 2025.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-10 05:58:42; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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