Preclinical research within the area of urethral tissue engineering has not yet been successfully translated into an efficient therapeutic option for patients. This gap could be attributed, in part, to inadequate design and reporting of the studies employing laboratory animals. In this study, a systematic review was conducted to investigate the quality of reporting in preclinical studies utilizing tissue engineering approaches for urethral repair. The scope was on studies performed in rabbits, published between January 2014 and March 2020. Quality assessment of the data was conducted according to the Animal Research: Reporting of in Vivo Experiments (ARRIVE) guidelines by the scoring of a 38-item checklist in different categories. A total of 28 articles that fulfilled the eligibility criteria were included in the study. The range of ARRIVE score was from 0 to 100, taking into consideration having reported the item in question or not. The mean checklist score was 53%. The items that attained the highest scores included the number of animals utilized, the size of control and experimental groups, and the definition of experimental outcomes. The least frequently reported items included the data regarding the experimental procedure, housing and husbandry, determination and justification of the number of animals, and reporting of adverse events. Surprisingly, full disclosure about ethical guidelines and animal protocol approval was missing in 54% of the studies. No paper stated the sample size estimation. Overall, our study found that a large number of studies display inadequate reporting of fundamental information and that the quality of reporting improved marginally over the study period. We encourage a comprehensive implementation of the ARRIVE guidelines in animal studies exploring tissue engineering for urethral repair, not only to facilitate effective translation of preclinical research findings into clinical therapies, but also to ensure compliance with ethical principles and to minimize unnecessary animal studies.
Keywords: animal experiments; hypospadias; quality assessment; translational research; urethral strictures.