Oral ulcers of COVID-19 patients: a scoping review protocol

  1. Abanoub Riad
  2. Julien Issa
  3. Veronika Chuchmova
  4. Simona Slezakova
  5. Esraa Gomaa
  6. Andrea Pokorna
  7. Jitka Klugarova
  8. Miloslav Klugar

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Abstract

Objective

This scoping review aims to systematically identify the types, characteristics, and possible pathophysiologic etiologies of the oral ulcers that emerge in COVID-19 patients.

Introduction

The oral cavity is a vulnerable niche for the most diverse microbial ecosystem in the human body; therefore, it presents a wide array of mucocutaneous complications that could indicate various acute and chronic conditions. The COVID-19-related oral conditions, including oral ulcers, had been widely debated as direct manifestations or indirect complications of the SARS-CoV-2 infection. According to a preliminary search of PROSPERO, MEDLINE, the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and the JBI Evidence Synthesis , there is no published nor registered scoping review concerned with the oral ulcers of COVID-19 patients.

Inclusion criteria

The review will include studies included COVID-19 patients whose infection had been confirmed by RT-PCR testing regardless of infection severity and clinical course. Only the studies that reported COVID-19 patients with oral ulcers.

Methods

A three-phase search strategy will be carried out: an initial limited search, a full electronic search, and hand search using the reference lists of all included records. The main bibliographic databases of published literature will include MEDLINE® (Ovid), EMBASE (Elsevier), and Cochrane COVID-19 Study Register. All identified records will be managed using EndNote 9.2, and the titles and abstracts will be screened against the inclusion criteria before the full text of all potentially relevant studies will be examined. The data will be presented in tabular form, rating maps, and narrative summary.

Registration

This protocol had been pre-registered in Open Science Framework (OSF) Registries. [1]

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  1. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.22.21250326v2 on medRxiv
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.22.21250326: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    The first phase, which has been already completed, was an initial limited search of MEDLINE® (Ovid) and Google Scholar to identify relevant articles, followed by an analysis of the text words contained in the titles and abstracts of retrieved records, in addition to the index terms used to describe these records.
    Google Scholar
    suggested: (Google Scholar, RRID:SCR_008878)
    A full search strategy for MEDLINE (PubMed) is stipulated in Appendix 1.
    MEDLINE
    suggested: (MEDLINE, RRID:SCR_002185)
    PubMed
    suggested: (PubMed, RRID:SCR_004846)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.22.21250326v1 on medRxiv