392,010 papers found

In the present work the general characteristics, aims and applications of meta-analysis in public health are described. The general rules and the relevant steps for the development of this type of studies are considered. These points are illustrated with a number of real examples and the advantages and limitations of t…

The authors present some basic concepts of meta-analysis, a process to evaluate and combine the results of conflicting studies. Authors illustrate the process by presenting a practical example in rheumatology.

Any experiment brings about results and conclusions that necessarily have a component of uncertainty. Many factors influence the degree of this uncertainty, yet they can be overlooked when drawing conclusions from a body of research. Here, we showcase how subjective logic could be employed as a complementary tool to me…

AIM: To assess robustness of findings in recent systematic reviews of atypical antipsychotics in schizophrenia patients in the presence of heterogeneity. METHODS: Relative efficacy was measured in seven direct comparisons of mean difference (MD) in average positive and negative syndrome scale total score and compariso…

This paper proposes the use of the tools of statistical meta-analysis as a method of conflict resolution with respect to experiments in cognitive linguistics. With the help of statistical meta-analysis, the effect size of similar experiments can be compared, a well-founded and robust synthesis of the experimental data…

The amount of available biomedical information is vast and growing. Natural limitations of the way clinicians and researchers approach this treasure trove of information comprise difficulties locating the information, and once located, cognitive biases may lead to inappropriate use of the information. Systematic review…

Meta-analysis is a powerful tool for combining related studies but such an aggregation would be flawed if studies investigated different populations or applied different methods in this investigation. While studies with differences that are statistically detected but not explained can be analysed by techniques of rando…

Bayesian methods seem a natural choice for combining sources of evidence in meta-analyses. However, in practice, their sensitivity to the choice of prior distribution is much less attractive, particularly for parameters describing heterogeneity. A recent non-Bayesian approach to fixed-effects meta-analysis provides nov…

The Peto odds ratio is a well-known effect measure in meta-analysis of binary outcomes. For pairwise comparisons, the Peto odds ratio estimator can be severely biased in the situation of unbalanced sample sizes in the two treatment groups or large treatment effects. In this publication, we evaluate Peto odds ratio esti…

Clinical prediction models aim to provide estimates of absolute risk for a diagnostic or prognostic endpoint. Such models may be derived from data from various studies in the context of a meta-analysis. We describe and propose approaches for assessing heterogeneity in predictor effects and predictions arising from mode…

Given the plethora of studies today on the same topic, clinicians in rheumatology as well as others increasingly rely on systematic reviews, with or without meta-analysis, to aid in their evidence-based decision-making. However, given time constraints, staying up-to-date on current methods for conducting systematic rev…

The objective of this study was to describe the general approaches of dose-response meta-analysis (DRMA) available for the quantitative synthesis of data using the R software. We conducted a DRMA using two types of data, the difference of means in continuous data and the odds ratio in binary data. The package commands…

Meta-analysis of diagnostic studies is still field of ongoing biometrical research. Especially, clinical researchers call for methods that allow for a comparison of different diagnostic tests to a common gold standard. Focussing on two diagnostic tests, the main parameters of interest are differences of sensitivities a…

This review aimed to arrange the process of a systematic review of genome-wide association studies in order to practice and apply a genome-wide meta-analysis (GWMA). The process has a series of five steps: searching and selection, extraction of related information, evaluation of validity, meta-analysis by type of genet…

Meta-analysis is a popular and flexible analysis that can be fit in many modeling frameworks. Two methods of fitting meta-analyses that are growing in popularity are structural equation modeling (SEM) and multilevel modeling (MLM). By using SEM or MLM to fit a meta-analysis researchers have access to powerful technique…