Plea for routinely presenting prediction intervals in meta-analysis.
TLDR
The prediction interval reflects the variation in treatment effects over different settings, including what effect is to be expected in future patients, such as the patients that a clinician is interested to treat, in meta-analyses.Abstract:
Objectives Evaluating the variation in the strength of the effect across studies is a key feature of meta-analyses. This variability is reflected by measures like τ 2 or I 2 , but their clinical interpretation is not straightforward. A prediction interval is less complicated: it presents the expected range of true effects in similar studies. We aimed to show the advantages of having the prediction interval routinely reported in meta-analyses. Design We show how the prediction interval can help understand the uncertainty about whether an intervention works or not. To evaluate the implications of using this interval to interpret the results, we selected the first meta-analysis per intervention review of the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews Issues 2009–2013 with a dichotomous (n=2009) or continuous (n=1254) outcome, and generated 95% prediction intervals for them. Results In 72.4% of 479 statistically significant (random-effects p 2 >0), the 95% prediction interval suggested that the intervention effect could be null or even be in the opposite direction. In 20.3% of those 479 meta-analyses, the prediction interval showed that the effect could be completely opposite to the point estimate of the meta-analysis. We demonstrate also how the prediction interval can be used to calculate the probability that a new trial will show a negative effect and to improve the calculations of the power of a new trial. Conclusions The prediction interval reflects the variation in treatment effects over different settings, including what effect is to be expected in future patients, such as the patients that a clinician is interested to treat. Prediction intervals should be routinely reported to allow more informative inferences in meta-analyses.read more
Citations
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Socioeconomic status and the 25 × 25 risk factors as determinants of premature mortality: a multicohort study and meta-analysis of 1·7 million men and women
Silvia Stringhini,Cristian Carmeli,Markus Jokela,Mauricio Avendano,Mauricio Avendano,Peter A. Muennig,Florence Guida,Fulvio Ricceri,Angelo d’Errico,Henrique Barros,Murielle Bochud,Marc Chadeau-Hyam,Françoise Clavel-Chapelon,Giuseppe Costa,Cyrille Delpierre,Cyrille Delpierre,Sílvia Fraga,Marcel Goldberg,Marcel Goldberg,Graham G. Giles,Vittorio Krogh,Michelle Kelly-Irving,Michelle Kelly-Irving,Richard Layte,Aurélie M. Lasserre,Michael Marmot,Martin Preisig,Martin J. Shipley,Peter Vollenweider,Marie Zins,Marie Zins,Ichiro Kawachi,Andrew Steptoe,Johan P. Mackenbach,Paolo Vineis,Mika Kivimäki,Mika Kivimäki +36 more
TL;DR: Socioeconomic circumstances, in addition to the 25 × 25 factors, should be targeted by local and global health strategies and health risk surveillance to reduce mortality.
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Workplace interventions for reducing sitting at work
Nipun Shrestha,Katriina T. Kukkonen-Harjula,Jos Verbeek,Sharea Ijaz,Veerle Hermans,Soumyadeep Bhaumik +5 more
TL;DR: A large number of people are employed in sedentary occupations and physical inactivity and excessive sitting at workplaces have been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease, obesity, and all-cause mortality, so the effectiveness of workplace interventions to reduce sitting at work compared to no intervention or alternative interventions was evaluated.
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Evaluations of the uptake and impact of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) Statement and extensions: a scoping review
TL;DR: The pooled results of these studies suggest that reporting of many items in the PRISMA Statement is suboptimal, even in the 2382 SRs published after 2009, where nine items were adhered to by fewer than 67% of SRs.
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TL;DR: Whether services should prioritise interventions that mitigate developing certain psychiatric disorders following childhood abuse requires further review and higher-quality meta-analyses for specific outcomes and more empirical studies on the developmental pathways from childhood sexual abuse to later outcomes are necessary.
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Short-term exposure to particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and ozone (O3) and all-cause and cause-specific mortality: Systematic review and meta-analysis.
Pablo Wenceslao Orellano,Julieta Itatí Reynoso,Nancy Esther Quaranta,Ariel Bardach,Agustín Ciapponi +4 more
TL;DR: Evidence is found of a positive association between short-term exposure to PM10, PM2.5, NO2, and O3 and all-cause mortality, and between PM10 and PM 2.5 and cardiovascular, respiratory and cerebrovascular mortality.
References
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Measuring inconsistency in meta-analyses
TL;DR: A new quantity is developed, I 2, which the authors believe gives a better measure of the consistency between trials in a meta-analysis, which is susceptible to the number of trials included in the meta- analysis.
Book
Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions
Julian P T Higgins,Sally Green +1 more
TL;DR: The Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions is the official document that describes in detail the process of preparing and maintaining Cochrane systematic reviews on the effects of healthcare interventions.
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Conducting Meta-Analyses in R with the metafor Package
TL;DR: The metafor package provides functions for conducting meta-analyses in R and includes functions for fitting the meta-analytic fixed- and random-effects models and allows for the inclusion of moderators variables (study-level covariates) in these models.