The application of network meta-analysis is becoming increasingly widespread, and for a successful implementation, it requires that the direct comparison result and the indirect comparison result should be consistent. Because of this, a proper detection of inconsistency is often a key issue in network meta-analysis as whether the results can be…

Checking for possible inconsistency between direct and indirect evidence is an important task in network meta-analysis. Recently, an evidence-splitting (ES) model has been proposed, that allows separating direct and indirect evidence in a network and hence assessing inconsistency. A salient feature of this model is that the variance for…

Network meta-analysis (NMA) is an extension of pairwise meta-analysis (PMA) which combines evidence from trials on multiple treatments in connected networks. NMA delivers internally consistent estimates of relative treatment efficacy, needed for rational decision making. Over its first 20 years NMA's use has grown exponentially, with applications…

Drug repurposing refers to the process of discovering new therapeutic uses for existing medicines. Compared to traditional drug discovery, drug repurposing is attractive for its speed, cost, and reduced risk of failure. However, existing approaches for drug repurposing involve complex, computationally-intensive analytical methods that are not…

Some patients benefit from a treatment while others may do so less or do not benefit at all. We have previously developed a two-stage network meta-regression prediction model that synthesized randomized trials and evaluates how treatment effects vary across patient characteristics. In this article, we extended this model to combine different…

When studies use different scales to measure continuous outcomes, standardised mean differences (SMD) are required to meta-analyse the data. However, outcomes are often reported as endpoint or change from baseline scores. Combining corresponding SMDs can be problematic and available guidance advises against this practice. We aimed to examine the…