From "Stroke" to "Studies"

CAMARADES began as the "Collaborrative Approach to Meta-Analysis and Review of Animal Data from Experimental Studies", refelecting the interests of the investigators in translational failure in Stroke.

However, through the work of others (Bebarta et al, Bednar et al) it was apparent that some of the issues of internal and external validity which we have identified on the stroke field might also be relevant in animal modelling of other diseases.

We were interested to take our approach to thre modelling of other neurological diseases where we perceived there to be translational failure, partly to ascertain whether the apparent shortcomings in the stroke field were more generally prevalent.

As a result we have now looked systematically across the modelling of a range of conditions including spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, cerebral glioma, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and Alzheimers disease; many of these are either published or in press. Broadley speaking, our hypothesis that findings in these domains might similarly be confounded by poor study quality has been confirmed.

It seems likely that similar issues might confound animal modelling of non-neurological disease, or indeed more fundamental research in the life sciences. This is an increasing focus of our current work, and to reflect this we have decided to change the S of CAMARADES from "Stroke" to "Studies". Although we will also be looking at non-animal studies, for the time being we leave the third A as it stands!