Uptake of systematic reviews and meta-analyses based on individual participant data in clinical practice guidelines: descriptive study.

To establish the extent to which systematic reviews and meta-analyses of individual participant data (IPD) are being used to inform the recommendations included in published clinical guidelines

Neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio as a bladder cancer biomarker: assessing prognostic and predictive value in SWOG 8710

No abstract available

A Multilevel Meta‑Analysis

Insecure attachment to primary caregivers is associated with the development of depression symptoms in children and youth. This association has been shown by individual studies testing the relation between attachment and depression and by meta-analyses focusing on broad internalizing problems instead of depression or adult samples only. We therefore meta-analytically examined the associations between attachment security and depression in children and adolescents, using a multilevel approach. In total, 643 effect sizes were extracted from 123 independent samples. A significant moderate overall effect size was found (r = .31), indicating that insecure attachment to primary caregivers is associated with depression. Multivariate analysis of the significant moderators that impacted on the strength of the association between attachment security and depression showed that country of the study, study design, gender, the type of attachment, and the type of instrument to assess attachment uniquely contributed to the explanation of variance. This study suggests that insecure attachment may be a predictor of the development of depression in children and adolescents. When treating depression in children, attachment should therefore be addressed

ForestPMPlot: A Flexible Tool for Visualizing Heterogeneity Between Studies in Meta-analysis.

Meta-analysis has become a popular tool for genetic association studies to combine different genetic studies. A key challenge in meta-analysis is heterogeneity, or the differences in effect sizes between studies. Heterogeneity complicates the interpretation of meta-analyses. In this paper, we describe ForestPMPlot, a flexible visualization tool for analyzing studies included in a meta-analysis. The main feature of the tool is visualizing the differences in the effect sizes of the studies to understand why the studies exhibit heterogeneity for a particular phenotype and locus pair under different conditions. We show the application of this tool to interpret a meta-analysis of 17 mouse studies, and to interpret a multi-tissue eQTL study

Can meta-analysis be trusted?

Until around 25 years ago the only way to assimilate and evaluate research evidence was through discursive literature reviews, in which someone with an interest in a given research topic would accumulate and subjectively evaluate the importance of research findings in that area. These reviews, although informative, are highly reliant on the discretion of the author who, with the best will in the world, could be unaware of important findings or could give particular importance to studies that others might believe to be relatively less important (see Wolf, 1986). The failure of literature reviews to provide objective ways to assimilate scientific evidence led scientists to look a statistical solution. The groundbreaking work of Glass (1976) and Rosenthal and Rubin (1978) paved the way for what we now know as meta-analysis: a statistical technique by which findings from independent studies can be assimilated

The use of meta-analysis in economic evaluation

Meta-analysis provides a family of statistical techniques for combining the results of similar studies. This paper examines the meta-analysis of clinical data in economic studies, and points to the issues and considerations that must be addressed when designing and conducting a meta-analysis of clinical data for use in an economic evaluation. We investigate whether the standard approaches employed in the meta-analysis of clinical data are satisfactory to meet the demands of economic evaluation, and assess the meta-analyses contained in a sample of economic evaluations identified from the NHS conomic Evaluation Database. Finally, we provide guidance on the appropriate use of meta-analysis for economic evaluations.economic evaluation, meta-analysis