Accelerated induction regimens of TNF-alpha inhibitors in patients with inflammatory bowel disease: a scoping review protocol.

Abstract

Tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha inhibitors are commonly used to treat inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In patients with IBD who are unresponsive to their first induction dose, the implementation of an 'accelerated' induction dose schedule (doses more frequent than recommended in product monographs) is becoming increasingly common. It is unclear whether this practice results in favourable patient outcomes, such as avoidance of surgery and disease remission. As such, there is a need to identify and map the current evidence base on accelerated induction schedules of these medications in the treatment of IBD. A scoping review will be employed to systematically identify and characterise the nature of scientific literature on accelerated induction regimens of TNF-alpha inhibitors. MEDLINE, Embase, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts and grey literature will be searched to identify relevant studies. The titles/abstracts of all records and full text of potentially relevant articles will be independently screened for inclusion by two reviewers. Data will be abstracted from included studies by one reviewer and verified for accuracy by another. The findings will be synthesised descriptively. We intend to report the findings of this scoping review in a peer-reviewed journal and a scientific conference. This research was registered prospectively with the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/z7n2d/).