Background: Older adults infrequently participate in randomized controlled trials (RCTs), making it difficult to assess the efficacy of treatment for this population. Meta-analyses using pooled data on the older adults who do participate in high quality RCTs would provide initial data on whether older adults respond differently than younger adults. The Cochrane Collaboration is an international organization established to prepare, maintain, and provide access to systematic reviews of the effects of RCTs of healthcare interventions. Objective: To identify the Cochrane systematic reviews relevant to the issues of older adults and to determine how age is described within these reviews.

Methods: The titles of all 657 completed reviews published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (CSDR), Volume 4,1999, were examined by two independent reviewers for relevance to care of older adults. Irrelevant reviews, e.g., those concerning fertility or pediatric issues, were excluded.

Results: 313 reviews were identified; 174 definite and 139 possibly relevant to older adults. Several of the reviews relevant to the aged did not contain studies that included subjects over age 65, e.g. "Amantadine and Rimantadine for Preventing and Treating Influenza A in Adults". Our data suggests that: a) the CDSR includes many topics of interest to those caring for older adults; b)it is unusual for the number of older adults to be specified, or for there to be pooling of data by age.

Conclusion: To fulfill its mission to improve the translation of medical research into practice, the Cochrane Collaboration needs to provide users of their systematic reviews with more precise data on the ages of the subjects included in the pooled results. Additionally, it would be helpful to make available post-hoc subgroup analyses of data from older adults, particularly individual patient meta-analyses. The Cochrane Collaboration Health Care of Older Adults Field is working to institute these changes.