Statistical approaches to identify subgroups in meta-analysis of individual participant data: a simulation study.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Individual participant data meta-analysis (IPD-MA) is considered the gold standard for investigating subgroup effects. Frequently used regression-based approaches to detect subgroups in IPD-MA are: meta-regression, per-subgroup meta-analysis (PS-MA), meta-analysis of interaction terms (MA-IT), naive one-stage IPD-MA (ignoring potential study-level confounding), and centred one-stage IPD-MA (accounting for potential study-level confounding). Clear guidance on the analyses is lacking and clinical researchers may use approaches with suboptimal efficiency to investigate subgroup effects in an IPD setting. Therefore, our aim is to overview and compare the aforementioned methods, and provide recommendations over which should be preferred.

Methods

We conducted a simulati

SUBMITTER: Belias M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6720416 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature