An improved Bayesian approach to estimating the reference interval from a meta-analysis: Directly monitoring the marginal quantiles and characterizing their uncertainty.

ABSTRACT: Reference intervals, or reference ranges, aid medical decision-making by containing a pre-specified proportion (e.g., 95%) of the measurements in a representative healthy population. We recently proposed three approaches for estimating a reference interval from a meta-analysis based on a random effects model: a frequentist approach, a Bayesian posterior predictive interval, and an empirical approach. Because the Bayesian posterior predictive interval becomes wider to incorporate estimation uncertainty, it may systematically contain greater than 95% of measurements when the number of studies is small or the between study heterogeneity is large. The frequentist and empirical approaches also captured a median of less than 95% of measurements in this setting, and 95% confidence or credible int

SUBMITTER: Siegel L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10886429 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature