392,095 papers found

BACKGROUND: Stroke is a major cause of global mortality and disability. Currently, the treatment of acute ischaemic stroke through reperfusion has posed several challenges, raising the need for complementary options to protect the ischaemic penumbra. Recent investigations have indicated that certain epigenetic factors,…

PURPOSE: The aim of this meta-analysis was comparing the efficacy of GnRH antagonist (GnRH-ant) protocol and progestin-primed ovarian stimulation (PPOS) in polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS) women. METHODS: A search was conducted from PubMed, Embase, The Cochrane library, Web of Science, and Scopus databases to collec…

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that antipsychotic drugs differ in their effect on the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia. So far, there is no comprehensive systematic review available that would enable providers and patients to make informed choices regarding this important aspect of treatment. With a large number of s…

BACKGROUND: Chimeric antigen receptor T cell therapy (CAR-T) represents a promising and exciting new therapy for hematologic malignancies, where prognosis for relapsed/refractory patients remains poor. Encouraging results from clinical trials have often been tempered by heterogeneity in response to treatment among pati…

BACKGROUND: Increasingly in network meta-analysis (NMA), there is a need to incorporate non-randomised evidence to estimate relative treatment effects, and in particular in cases with limited randomised evidence, sometimes resulting in disconnected networks of treatments. When combining different sources of data, compl…

BACKGROUND: A model that can predict treatment response for a patient with specific baseline characteristics would help decision-making in personalized medicine. The aim of the study is to develop such a model in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients who receive certolizumab (CTZ) plus methotrexate (MTX)…

INTRODUCTION: Arthroscopic partial meniscectomy (APM) after degenerative meniscus tears is one of the most frequently performed surgeries in orthopaedics. Although several randomised controlled trials (RCTs) have been published that showed no clear benefit compared with sham treatment or non-surgical treatment, the inc…

INTRODUCTION: Conflicting results from multiple randomised trials indicate that the methods and effects of blood pressure (BP) reduction after acute intracerebral haemorrhage (ICH) are complex. The Blood pressure in Acute Stroke Collaboration is an international collaboration, which aims to determine the optimal manage…

INTRODUCTION: Sodium-glucose cotransporter 2 inhibitors (SGLT-2is) and glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs) are two classes of glucose-lowering drugs gaining popularity in the treatment of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Current guidelines suggest patient-centred approaches when deciding between availa…

BACKGROUND: Preterm birth is the most common cause of death and harm to newborn babies. Babies that are born early may have difficulties at birth and experience health problems during early childhood. Despite extensive study, there is still uncertainty about the effectiveness of progestogen (medications that are simila…

Limited evidence on relative effectiveness is common in Health Technology Assessment (HTA), often due to sparse evidence on the population of interest or study-design constraints. When evidence directly relating to the policy decision is limited, the evidence base could be extended to incorporate indirectly related evi…

The conduct of dose-finding trials can be specifically challenging in small populations, for example, in pediatric settings. Recently, research has shown that Bayesian borrowing from adult trials combined with appropriately robust prior distributions enables the conduct of pediatric dose-finding trials with very small…

BACKGROUND: Inconsistency has been reported to be ubiquitous in network meta-analysis. However, this evidence is based on statistical tests for inconsistency with well-documented power limitations. A novel interpretation index was developed that is founded on the Kullback-Leibler divergence measure and warrants a semi-…

Cellular therapy is a promising treatment option for Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD). Different cell types can be used to regenerate and repair tissues affected by PAD. Many studies have proposed the use of stem cells, such as mesenchymal stem cells, or even mononuclear cells isolated from peripheral blood or bone ma…

BACKGROUND: The current practice in guideline development is to use the control group event rate (CR) as a surrogate of baseline risk and to assume portability of the relative treatment effect across populations with low, moderate and high baseline risk. We sought to emulate this practice in a very large sample of meta…

OBJECTIVES: To explore the use of prediction interval (PI) for the simultaneous evaluation of the imprecision and inconsistency domains of Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, and Evaluation using stakeholder-provided decision thresholds. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: We propose transforming the PI of a meta-analysis f…

OBJECTIVES: To review methodological guidance for nonlinear covariate-outcome associations (NL), and linear effect modification and nonlinear effect modification (LEM and NLEM) at the participant level in individual participant data meta-analyses (IPDMAs) and their power requirements. STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: We…

The fragility index has been increasingly used to assess the robustness of the results of clinical trials since 2014. It aims at finding the smallest number of event changes that could alter originally statistically significant results. Despite its popularity, some researchers have expressed several concerns about the…

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) has a complex etiology which is not yet fully elucidated. The identification of gene perturbations and hub genes of T2D may deepen our understanding of its genetic basis. We aimed to identify highly perturbed genes and hub genes associated with T2D via an extensive bioinformatics analytic workflow…

Meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials is generally considered the most reliable source of estimates of relative treatment effects. However, in the last few years, there has been interest in using non-randomized studies to complement evidence from randomized controlled trials. Several meta-analytical models have…