Meta-analysts often encounter missing covariate values when estimating meta-regression models. In practice, ad hoc approaches involving data deletion have been widely used. The current study investigates the performance of different methods for handling missing covariates in meta-regression, including complete-case analysis (CCA), shifting-case…

We examine four important considerations in the development of covariate adjustment methodologies for indirect treatment comparisons. First, we consider potential advantages of weighting versus outcome modeling, placing focus on bias-robustness. Second, we outline why model-based extrapolation may be required and useful, in the specific context of…

Systematic reviews are vital for guiding practice, research and policy, although they are often slow and labour-intensive. Large language models (LLMs) could speed up and automate systematic reviews, but their performance in such tasks has yet to be comprehensively evaluated against humans, and no study has tested Generative Pre-Trained…

During drug development, a biomarker is sometimes identified as separating a patient population into those with more and those with less benefit from evaluated treatments. Consequently, later studies might be targeted, while earlier ones are performed in mixed patient populations. This poses a challenge in evidence synthesis, especially if only…

Randomised trials are often funded by commercial companies and methodological studies support a widely held suspicion that commercial funding may influence trial results and conclusions. However, these studies often have a risk of confounding and reporting bias. The risk of confounding is markedly reduced in meta-epidemiological studies that…

Launching biomedical innovations based on clinical demands instead of translating basic research findings to practice reduces the risk that the results will not fit the clinical routine. To realize this type of innovation, a meta-analysis of the body of research is necessary to reveal demand-matching concepts. However, both the data deluge and the…

The use of individual patient data (IPD) in network meta-analysis (NMA) is becoming increasingly popular. However, as most studies do not report IPD, most NMAs are performed using aggregate data for at least some, if not all, of the studies. We investigate the benefits of including varying proportions of IPD studies in an NMA. Several models have…

When the Medical Library Association identified questions critical for the future of the profession, it assigned groups to use systematic reviews to find the answers to these questions. Group 6, whose question was on emerging technologies, recognized early on that the systematic review process would not work well for this question, which looks…

The objective of this study is to empirically compare alternative meta-analytic methods for combining dose-response data from epidemiological studies. We identified meta-analyses of epidemiological studies that analyzed the association between a single nutrient and a dichotomous outcome. For each topic, we performed meta-analyses of odds ratios…