Modeling the Role of Baseline Risk and Additional Study‐Level Covariates in Meta‐Analysis of Treatment Effects

Fuente: Wiley Open Access
Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Hauptverfasser: Phuc T. Tran, Annamaria Guolo
Format: Artículo Open Access
Veröffentlicht: Wiley 2025
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
_version_ 1867010994199330816
author Phuc T. Tran
Annamaria Guolo
author_facet Phuc T. Tran
Annamaria Guolo
Phuc T. Tran
Annamaria Guolo
collection Wiley Open Access
contents Modeling the Role of Baseline Risk and Additional Study‐Level Covariates in Meta‐Analysis of Treatment Effects Phuc T. Tran Annamaria Guolo Statistics in Medicine ABSTRACT The relationship between the treatment effect and the baseline risk is a recognized tool to investigate the heterogeneity of treatment effects in meta‐analyses of clinical trials. Since the baseline risk is difficult to measure, a proxy is adopted, which is based on the rate of events for the subject under the control condition. The use of the proxy in terms of aggregated information at the study level implies that the data are affected by measurement errors, a problem that the literature has explored and addressed in recent years. This paper proposes an extension of the classical meta‐analysis with baseline risk information, which includes additional study‐specific covariates other than the rate of events to explain heterogeneity. Likelihood‐based inference is carried out by including measurement error correction techniques necessary to prevent unreliable inference due to the measurement errors affecting the covariates summarized at the study level. Within‐study covariances between risk measures and the covariate components are computed using Taylor expansions based on study‐level covariate subgroup summary information. When such information is not available and, more generally, in order to reduce computational difficulties, a pseudo‐likelihood solution is developed under a working independence assumption between the observed error‐prone measures. The performance of the methods is investigated in a series of simulation studies under different specifications for the sample size, the between‐study heterogeneity, and the underlying risk distribution. They are applied to a meta‐analysis about the association between COVID‐19 and schizophrenia. 10.1002/sim.70278 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
doi_str_mv 10.1002/sim.70278
format Artículo Open Access
id wiley_oa_10_1002_sim_70278
institution Wiley Open Access
license_str_mv http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
publishDate 2025
publisher Wiley
record_format wiley_oa
spellingShingle Modeling the Role of Baseline Risk and Additional Study‐Level Covariates in Meta‐Analysis of Treatment Effects
Phuc T. Tran
Annamaria Guolo
Statistics in Medicine
Modeling the Role of Baseline Risk and Additional Study‐Level Covariates in Meta‐Analysis of Treatment Effects Phuc T. Tran Annamaria Guolo Statistics in Medicine ABSTRACT The relationship between the treatment effect and the baseline risk is a recognized tool to investigate the heterogeneity of treatment effects in meta‐analyses of clinical trials. Since the baseline risk is difficult to measure, a proxy is adopted, which is based on the rate of events for the subject under the control condition. The use of the proxy in terms of aggregated information at the study level implies that the data are affected by measurement errors, a problem that the literature has explored and addressed in recent years. This paper proposes an extension of the classical meta‐analysis with baseline risk information, which includes additional study‐specific covariates other than the rate of events to explain heterogeneity. Likelihood‐based inference is carried out by including measurement error correction techniques necessary to prevent unreliable inference due to the measurement errors affecting the covariates summarized at the study level. Within‐study covariances between risk measures and the covariate components are computed using Taylor expansions based on study‐level covariate subgroup summary information. When such information is not available and, more generally, in order to reduce computational difficulties, a pseudo‐likelihood solution is developed under a working independence assumption between the observed error‐prone measures. The performance of the methods is investigated in a series of simulation studies under different specifications for the sample size, the between‐study heterogeneity, and the underlying risk distribution. They are applied to a meta‐analysis about the association between COVID‐19 and schizophrenia. 10.1002/sim.70278 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
title Modeling the Role of Baseline Risk and Additional Study‐Level Covariates in Meta‐Analysis of Treatment Effects
topic Statistics in Medicine
url https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sim.70278