Investigator discusses need for further research on cranberry products and UTI

In this video, Christian Moro, PhD, BSc, BEd, MBus, SFHEA, discusses next steps following the European Urology Focus paper, “Cranberry Juice, Cranberry Tablets, or Liquid Therapies for Urinary Tract Infection: A Systematic Review and Network Meta-analysis.” Moro is associate dean of External Engagement and an associate professor of Biomedical Sciences and Medicine within the Faculty of Health Sciences and Medicine at Bond University, Gold Coast, Australia.

Transcription:

What are the next steps for this research?

There are a couple of things that were brought up. A lot of studies were done in a way that weren't randomized. It's one of the problems whenever you look back into systematic reviews, you often find, "I wish we'd done more studies that were consistent." But the 2 things were lacking effective controls. The follow-up times were also a bit variable. There's no answer, how long do you follow up?…And then also funding. A number of studies were funded by companies with conflicts of interest or authors [had] conflict of interest. So still, as often is the case, there's that real need for independent, randomized control studies to really find this out. We think it's worth doing because although it's been done in a way that it would be a benefit in any of these non-drug interventions and looking at clear studies to try and assess what's happening. That was something that didn't surprise us. Mind you, there were a number of them that weren't funded. We sometimes look at areas where every study is funded by someone in the group. We had a medium confidence for most of the findings in regards to are they reliable or not, with some of verging them upon the low due to funding.

This transcription was edited for clarity.