Article
Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology
Seungjun Ahn, Somnath Datta
Summary: The article introduces a new method for differential network analysis and develops an R package PRANA, which can easily include multiple confounding factors.
Article
Nutrition & Dietetics
Mamaru Ayenew Awoke, Cheryce L. Harrison, Julie Martin, Marie L. Misso, Siew Lim, Lisa J. Moran
Summary: This meta-analysis aimed to identify the behavior change techniques (BCT) associated with weight, energy intake, and physical activity changes in reproductive-aged adults. The study found that feedback on behavior and graded tasks were significantly associated with less weight gain, while reviewing behavior goals was significantly associated with lower energy intake. However, no individual BCT was significantly associated with physical activity. The findings provide further evidence on effective BCT for weight gain prevention interventions in adults of reproductive age.
Review
Endocrinology & Metabolism
Ildiko Lingvay, Robert Bauer, James Baker-Knight, Jack Lawson, Richard Pratley
Summary: This indirect treatment comparison study found that semaglutide 2.0 mg significantly reduced glycated hemoglobin and body weight compared to dulaglutide 3.0 mg and 4.5 mg. The findings of this study provide important comparative effectiveness information until randomized head-to-head studies become available.
JOURNAL OF CLINICAL ENDOCRINOLOGY & METABOLISM
(2022)
Article
Mathematical & Computational Biology
Peter J. Godolphin, Ian R. White, Jayne F. Tierney, David J. Fisher
Summary: Estimating within-trial interactions in meta-analysis is crucial for assessing treatment effects across participant subgroups. Current methods have limitations, so this article proposes practical methods to estimate interactions across multiple subgroups and present the data using forest plots. The proposed framework is demonstrated with examples and implemented in Stata. It can effectively demonstrate how treatment effects differ across participant subgroups.
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS METHODS
(2023)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Tianhui Zhou, Guangyu Tong, Fan Li, Lathe E. Thomas
Summary: Propensity score weighting is a crucial tool for comparative effectiveness research, introducing a class of balancing weights for alternative target populations and estimands, with a focus on optimal covariate balance and estimation efficiency.
Article
Soil Science
Surajit Mondal, Debashis Chakraborty
Summary: Compared to conventional tillage, no-tillage practices can enhance soil aggregation, water retention, and reduce microaggregates. There is a small decrease in total porosity, a large reduction in macroporosity, and a moderate increase in microporosity under no-tillage up to 20 cm soil depth. Adoption of no-tillage over years, latitude increase, and clay content all have significant effects on soil physical factors.
Article
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
David B. Richardson, Stephen R. Cole, Rachael K. Ross, Charles Poole, Haitao Chu, Alexander P. Keil
Summary: Meta-analyses combine information from a set of studies, but in settings with sparse data, bias in results and worsened confidence interval coverage may occur.
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Chemistry, Medicinal
Meng-Meng Wei, Chang-Qing Yu, Li-Ping Li, Zhu-Hong You, Lei Wang
Summary: More and more evidence suggests that circRNA plays a vital role in generating and treating diseases by interacting with miRNA. In this paper, a computational model BCMCMI is proposed to predict potential circRNA-miRNA interaction (CMI) by combining three features. BCMCMI utilizes the bidirectional encoding capability of the BERT algorithm to extract sequence features and constructs a heterogeneous network to capture topological features. The results show that BCMCMI outperforms other state-of-the-art models on benchmark datasets, indicating its potential as a valuable complement to wet experiments.
JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL INFORMATION AND MODELING
(2023)
Review
Pediatrics
Pauline E. van Beek, Peter Andriessen, Wes Onland, Ewoud Schuit
Summary: This study summarized prognostic models for predicting mortality in very preterm infants, assessing their quality and finding high risk of bias in the majority of models due to inadequate analysis. Internal validation was lacking in 41% of models and external validation in 96%. Meta-analyses showed good C-statistics for certain prediction scores.
Article
Cell Biology
Shinobu Nakanishi, Taiki Tsutsui, Nao Itai, Mitsuhiro Denda
Summary: This study conducted a comprehensive meta-transcriptome analysis of the expression of olfactory receptors (ORs) in human tissues. The analysis revealed tissue-dependent expression patterns of ORs, and identified 97 highly expressed ORs in 12 tissues. Functional analysis further indicated that three ORs were associated with skin, involved in epidermal differentiation and the regulation of the skin barrier. Especially, OR10A6 was found to be related to keratinization in skin and may serve as a potential target for modulation of keratinization.
FRONTIERS IN CELL AND DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Mathematical & Computational Biology
Richard D. Riley, Miriam Hattle, Gary S. Collins, Rebecca Whittle, Joie Ensor
Summary: Before conducting an individual participant data meta-analysis (IPDMA) project, researchers and funders need to assess its worth in terms of time and cost. This article presents a three-step approach to estimate the power of a planned IPDMA of randomized trials, specifically focusing on treatment-covariate interactions at the participant level. The approach assumes a common true interaction size across all trials and requires specifying a minimally important interaction size and providing aggregate data for each trial. Stata and R code, as well as two examples, are provided.
STATISTICS IN MEDICINE
(2022)
Article
Health Care Sciences & Services
Debashree Ray, Alvaro Munoz, Mingyu Zhang, Xiuhong Li, Nilanjan Chatterjee, Lisa P. Jacobson, Bryan Lau
Summary: This study provides a practical method for meta-analyzing cohorts with imbalance in measurement of confounders. The empirical results show that the estimates from this method are closer to the truth and are sensitive to heterogeneity in confounding bias across cohorts.
BMC MEDICAL RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Computer Science, Interdisciplinary Applications
Daeyoung Lim, Ming-Hui Chen, Joseph G. Ibrahim, Sungduk Kim, Arvind K. Shah, Jianxin Lin
Summary: This paper introduces a unified formula interface for meta-analysis and network meta-analysis using the R package metapack. The package allows flexible variance-covariance modeling for multivariate meta-analysis models and univariate network meta-analysis models, and provides functions for generating relevant plots and performing statistical inferences.
Article
Mathematical & Computational Biology
Wei Ma, Fuyi Tu, Hanzhong Liu
Summary: This article investigates several intuitive and commonly used regression models in randomized clinical trials, demonstrating that all these models can robustly estimate the treatment effect, even with arbitrary misspecification. The article also proposes consistent non-parametric variance estimators and compares them to existing model-based variance estimators. Recommendations are made for the effective use of regression under different scenarios.
STATISTICS IN MEDICINE
(2022)
Article
Pharmacology & Pharmacy
A. Migliore, G. Gigliucci, D. Integlia, N. Isailovic, B. Frediani
Summary: The study compared the clinical efficacy of biologics in ankylosing spondylitis and found that infliximab had the highest probability of achieving ASAS20 response at 12 and 24 weeks of treatment.
EUROPEAN REVIEW FOR MEDICAL AND PHARMACOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Health Care Sciences & Services
Laurie J. Hannigan, David M. Phillippo, Peter Hanlon, Laura Moss, Elaine W. Butterly, Neil Hawkins, Sofia Dias, Nicky J. Welton, David A. McAllister
Summary: Using Bayesian hierarchical models based on structures defined by existing ontologies can improve the precision of treatment efficacy estimates in patients with multimorbidity by sharing information across different drugs, detecting a larger proportion of small subgroup effects.
MEDICAL DECISION MAKING
(2022)
Article
Health Care Sciences & Services
Wei Fang, Zhenru Wang, Michael B. Giles, Chris H. Jackson, Nicky J. Welton, Christophe Andrieu, Howard Thom
Summary: This article explores the computational methods for estimating the expected value of partial perfect information (EVPPI), introducing the potential of quasi Monte Carlo (QMC) and multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) estimation techniques. The study found that QMC and MLMC offer substantial computational savings in situations where parameter sets are large and correlated, and EVPPI is large.
MEDICAL DECISION MAKING
(2022)
Review
Medicine, General & Internal
Angharad Care, Sarah J. Nevitt, Nancy Medley, Sarah Donegan, Laura Goodfellow, Lynn Hampson, Catrin Tudur Smith, Zarko Alfirevic
Summary: This study compared various interventions for preventing spontaneous preterm birth in women with a singleton pregnancy, showing that vaginal progesterone may be the most effective preventive treatment.
BMJ-BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL
(2022)
Article
Health Care Sciences & Services
David M. Phillippo, Sofia Dias, A. E. Ades, Mark Belger, Alan Brnabic, Daniel Saure, Yves Schymura, Nicky J. Welton
Summary: This study demonstrates the application of ML-NMR method to estimate treatment effects in different populations. The results show that ML-NMR has better fit and reduces uncertainty compared to previous methods, and the assumptions made are valid.
MEDICAL DECISION MAKING
(2023)
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Areti Angeliki Veroniki, Georgios Seitidis, Lesley Stewart, Mike Clarke, Catrin Tudur-Smith, Dimitris Mavridis, Catherine H. Yu, Lorenzo Moja, Sharon E. Straus, Andrea C. Tricco
Summary: This study conducted a systematic review and individual patient data network meta-analysis to compare the efficacy and complications of long-acting and intermediate-acting insulin for patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM). The results showed that long-acting insulin regimens reduced A1c and were associated with lower risk of severe hypoglycemia compared to intermediate-acting insulin regimens.
Article
Respiratory System
Matthew Evison, Ross Maconachie, Toby Mercer, Caitlin H. Daly, Nicky J. Welton, Shahzeena Aslam, Doug West, Neal Navani
Summary: Chemoradiotherapy followed by surgery (CRS) provides an extended disease-free survival and improved cost-effectiveness compared to chemotherapy plus surgery (CS) and chemotherapy plus radiotherapy (CR) in potentially resectable stage III-N2 NSCLC patients.
Article
Health Care Sciences & Services
David Glynn, Georgios Nikolaidis, Dina Jankovic, Nicky J. J. Welton
Summary: This article introduces a method to construct priors for randomized clinical trials (RCTs) based on previous RCTs, which can be used to aid research prioritization and trial design. The study shows that using empirically derived priors can reduce the expected value of research in value of information (VOI) analysis compared to using uninformative priors.
MEDICAL DECISION MAKING
(2023)
Article
Health Care Sciences & Services
Mathyn Vervaart, Eline Aas, Karl P. Claxton, Mark Strong, Nicky J. Welton, Torbjorn Wisloff, Anna Heath
Summary: We developed general purpose methods for simulating survival data from a probabilistic sample of survival probabilities, greatly reducing the computational burden of the EVSI data-simulation step when assuming treatment effect waning or using flexible survival models.
MEDICAL DECISION MAKING
(2023)
Review
Sport Sciences
Brad S. Currier, Jonathan C. Mcleod, Laura Banfield, Joseph Beyene, Nicky J. Welton, Alysha C. D'Souza, Joshua A. J. Keogh, Lydia Lin, Giulia Coletta, Antony Yang, Lauren Colenso-Semple, Kyle J. Lau, Alexandria Verboom, Stuart M. Phillips
Summary: This study aimed to determine the effects of distinct combinations of resistance training prescription variables (load, sets, and frequency) on muscle strength and hypertrophy. A systematic review and Bayesian network meta-analysis were conducted, and it was found that higher-load, multiset, thrice-weekly training was the most effective for strength gains, while higher-load, multiset, twice-weekly training was the best for hypertrophy.
BRITISH JOURNAL OF SPORTS MEDICINE
(2023)
Review
Oncology
Emily South, Ros Wade, Sumayya Anwer, Sahar Sharif-Hurst, Melissa Harden, Helen Fulbright, Sofia Dias, Mark Simmonds, Ian Rowe, Patricia Thornton, Tze Min Wah, Alison Eastwood
Summary: It is unclear which treatment is most effective for patients with small HCC due to limited evidence. The impact of these treatments on quality of life is also unknown. Further high-quality RCTs are needed to provide robust evidence, although they may be challenging to conduct.
Article
Medicine, General & Internal
Louise S. Guski, Gesche Juergens, Hugo Pedder, Niels K. G. Levinsen, Stig E. Andersen, Nicky J. Welton, Niels Graudal
Summary: This is the first network meta-analysis to assess outcomes associated with multiple conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs and glucocorticoid in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. The study's results support the present role of methotrexate as the primary reference conventional synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drug.
Review
Medicine, General & Internal
Anair Beverly, Giok Ong, Catherine Kimber, Josie Sandercock, Carolyn Doree, Nicky J. Welton, Peter Wicks, Lise J. Estcourt
Summary: The study aimed to assess the effectiveness and safety of antifibrinolytic and hemostatic drugs in reducing bleeding and the need for blood transfusion in people undergoing major vascular surgery. However, due to limited data, a network meta-analysis could not be performed. Further research in this field is needed.
COCHRANE DATABASE OF SYSTEMATIC REVIEWS
(2023)
Review
Medicine, General & Internal
Elaine Butterly, Lili Wei, Amanda Adler, Saleh A. M. Almazam, Khalid Alsallumi, Luke A. K. Blackbourn, Sofia Dias, Peter Hanlon, Katherine Hughes, Jim Lewsey, Robert Lindsay, Stuart McGurnaghan, John Petrie, David Phillippo, Naveed Sattar, Laurie A. Tomlinson, Nicky Welton, Sarah Wild, David McAllister
Summary: This study aims to calibrate trial results to improve the applicability of randomised controlled trials by using a network meta-analysis approach. The study will calibrate trial results for sodium glucose cotransporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors, glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP1) receptor analogues, and dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP4) inhibitors to the Scottish diabetes register.