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Variability of relative treatment effect among populations with low, moderate and high control group event rates: a meta-epidemiological study

Authors :
M. Hassan Murad
Zhen Wang
Mengli Xiao
Haitao Chu
Lifeng Lin
Source :
BMC Medical Research Methodology, Vol 24, Iss 1, Pp 1-6 (2024)
Publication Year :
2024
Publisher :
BMC, 2024.

Abstract

Abstract Background The current practice in guideline development is to use the control group event rate (CR) as a surrogate of baseline risk and to assume portability of the relative treatment effect across populations with low, moderate and high baseline risk. We sought to emulate this practice in a very large sample of meta-analyses. Methods We retrieved data from all meta-analyses published in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2003–2020) that evaluated a binary outcome, reported 2 × 2 data for each individual study and included at least 4 studies. We excluded studies with no events. We conducted meta-analyses with odds ratios and relative risks and performed subgroup analyses based on tertiles of CR. In sensitivity analyses, we evaluated the use of total event rate (TR) instead of CR and using quartiles instead of tertiles. Results The analysis included 2,531 systematic reviews (27,692 meta-analyses, 226,975 studies, 25,669,783 patients).The percentages of meta-analyses with statistically significant interaction (P

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
14712288
Volume :
24
Issue :
1
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
BMC Medical Research Methodology
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.81fa38ffdf4847da8e11e92dc912a1b7
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12874-024-02388-y