The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health
The new SPIRIT-C and CONSORT-C guidelines are extensions of the SPIRIT and CONSORT frameworks for studies that include neonates, infants, children, and adolescents. They provide useful guidance for researchers who intend to include children in clinical trials, particularly when children represent only a subgroup of the overall study population, and they contribute to increasing the safety of their participation.
The authors emphasize that these documents are especially important in an era like the present, in which artificial intelligence can generate information that may be construed as evidence, and commercial actors use the scientific environment to establish an alternative evidence base.
The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 2026; 10, 237-238
Recommended on behalf of EASE by Silvia Maina, Italy