Low reporting quality limits the contribution of human organ models to COVID-19 research: a systematic review
Maren Hülsemann, Silke Kniffert, Anna Löwa, Morris Baumgardt, Katja Hönzke, Valeria Fernandez Vallone, Natascha I Drude, Thomas Stüdemann, Ahmed SM Ali, Maria Arroyo Araujo, Alexandra Bannach-Brown, Linda Brunotte, Aileen Faist, Diana Fatykhova, Mara Fischer, Lina Hellwig, Saskia Hinse, Mirjana Kessler, Benjamin G Carlisle, Sadaf Khankeh, Ishminder Singh Dhamrait, Charlotte Klein, Hristina Koceva, Sriram Kumar, Jens Kurreck, Katarzyna A Ludwik, Philipp Mergenthaler, Sarah S Schmerbeck, Sameer Singh, Luiz Gustavo Teixeira Alves, Emanuel Wyler, Harald Stachelscheid, Stefan Hippenstiel, Ulf Toelch, Andreas C Hocke · 2026
Read Low reporting quality limits the contribution of human organ models to COVID-19 research: a systematic review by Maren Hülsemann, Silke Kniffert, Anna Löwa, Morris Baumgardt, Katja Hönzke, Valeria Fernandez Vallone, Natascha I Drude, Thomas Stüdemann, Ahmed SM Ali, Maria Arroyo Araujo, Alexandra Bannach-Brown, Linda Brunotte, Aileen Faist, Diana Fatykhova, Mara Fischer, Lina Hellwig, Saskia Hinse, Mirjana Kessler, Benjamin G Carlisle, Sadaf Khankeh, Ishminder Singh Dhamrait, Charlotte Klein, Hristina Koceva, Sriram Kumar, Jens Kurreck, Katarzyna A Ludwik, Philipp Mergenthaler, Sarah S Schmerbeck, Sameer Singh, Luiz Gustavo Teixeira Alves, Emanuel Wyler, Harald Stachelscheid, Stefan Hippenstiel, Ulf Toelch, Andreas C Hocke (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/PMC13449789.txt.
Description
Maren Hülsemann and a large Berlin team audit in 2026 how well the flood of COVID-19 studies using human organ models reported their methods. The pandemic pushed laboratories to repurpose organoids and other human models of varying complexity against the new virus, creating a natural experiment in research practice. The systematic review covered 558 studies, split into pandemic and post-pandemic periods, and judged how each investigated host factors, viral replication, and immune responses.
Reporting weaknesses ran deep: outcome measures varied so much that studies could barely be compared, model traits and procedures went undocumented, and quality fluctuated widely. Post-pandemic papers improved only partly. The authors link the gaps to harder bias assessment and shakier evidence synthesis, exactly when pooled answers mattered most. Their prescription is community-driven reporting standards and fuller methodological transparency before the next pandemic tests the same models.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Maren Hülsemann, Silke Kniffert, Anna Löwa, Morris Baumgardt, Katja Hönzke, Valeria Fernandez Vallone, Natascha I Drude, Thomas Stüdemann, Ahmed SM Ali, Maria Arroyo Araujo, Alexandra Bannach-Brown, Linda Brunotte, Aileen Faist, Diana Fatykhova, Mara Fischer, Lina Hellwig, Saskia Hinse, Mirjana Kessler, Benjamin G Carlisle, Sadaf Khankeh, Ishminder Singh Dhamrait, Charlotte Klein, Hristina Koceva, Sriram Kumar, Jens Kurreck, Katarzyna A Ludwik, Philipp Mergenthaler, Sarah S Schmerbeck, Sameer Singh, Luiz Gustavo Teixeira Alves, Emanuel Wyler, Harald Stachelscheid, Stefan Hippenstiel, Ulf Toelch, Andreas C Hocke |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 71 KB |
| LICENSE | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |