Applications of simple and accessible methods for meta-analysis involving rare events: A simulation study.

ABSTRACT: Meta-analysis of clinical trials targeting rare events face particular challenges when the data lack adequate number of events and are susceptible to high levels of heterogeneity. The standard meta-analysis methods (DerSimonian Laird (DL) and Mantel-Haenszel (MH)) often lead to serious distortions because of such data sparsity. Applications of the methods suited to specific incidence and heterogeneity characteristics are lacking, thus we compared nine available methods in a simulation study. We generated 360 meta-analysis scenarios where each considered different incidences, sample sizes, between-study variance (heterogeneity) and treatment allocation. We include globally recommended methods such as inverse-variance fixed/random-effect (IV-FE/RE), classical-MH, MH-FE, MH-DL, Peto, Peto-DL

SUBMITTER: Hodkinson A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8411477 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature