Abstract
In 1982 thrombolytic therapy for acute coronary syndromes was controversial. In a meta-analysis of seven trials Stampfer et al. found a reduced risk of mortality of 0.80 (95% confidence interval 0.68–0.95). These findings (Stampfer et al. 1982) were not accepted by cardiologists until 1986, when a large clinical trial confirmed the conclusions (Gruppo Italiano per lo Studio della Streptochinasi nell’Infarto Miocardico (GISSI) 1986), and streptokinase became widely applied.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsReferences
Berlin JA, Laird NM, Sacks HS, Chalmers TC (1989) A comparison of statistical methods for combining event rates from clinical trials. Stat Med 8:141–151
Bero LA, Grilli R, Grimshaw JM, Harvey E, Oxman AD, Thomson MA (1998) Closing the gap between research and practice: an overview of systematic reviews of interventions to promote the implementation of research findings. BMJ 317:465–468
Boekholdt SM, Sacks FM, Jukema JW, Shepherd J, Freeman DJ, McMahon AD, Cambien F, Nicaud V, GJ De grooth, Talmud PJ, Humphries SE, Miller GJ, Eiriksdottir G, Gudnason V, Kauma H, Kakko S, Savolainen MJ, Arca M, Montasli A, Liu S, Lanz HJ, Zwinderman AH, Kuivenhoven JA, Kastelein JJ (2005) Cholesterol ester transfer protein TaqiB variant, high density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, cardiovascular risk, and efficacy of pravastatin treatment. Circulation 111:278–287
Brewer T, Colditz GA (1999) Postmarketing surveillance and adverse drug reactions; current perspectives. JAMA 281:824–829
BUGS y WinBUGS. http://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/bugs
Casas JP, Leonelo EB, Humphries SE (2004) Endothelial NO synthase genotype and ischemic heart disease. Circulation 109:1359–1365
Chalmers I, Altman DG (1995) Systematic reviews. BMJ Publishing Group, London
Chan AW, Altman DG (2005) Identifying outcome reporting bias in randomised trials on PubMed: review of publications and survey of authors. BMJ 330:753–756
Cleophas TJ (2006) Meta-analysis. In: Cleophas TJ, Zwinderman AH, Cleophas AF (eds) Statistics applied to clinical trials, 3rd edn. Springer, Dordrecht, pp 205–218
Cochrane Library. http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane/hbook.htm. Accessed 15 Dec 2011
Cochrane Revman. http://www.cochrane.org/cochrane/revman.htm. Accessed 15 Dec 2011
Comprehensive Meta-analysis, by Biostat. http://www.meta-analysis.com. Accessed 15 Dec 2011
Conlin PR, Spence JD, Williams B, Ribeiro AB, Saito I, Benedict C, Bunt AM (2000) Angiotensin II antagonists for hypertension: are there differences in efficacy? Am J Hypertens 13:418–426
Cook DJ, Mulrow CD, Haynes RB (1998) Systematic reviews: synthesis of the best evidence for clinical decisions. Ann Intern Med 317:339–342
Dersimonian R, Laird NM (1986) Meta-analysis in clinical trials. Control Clin Trials 7:177–188
Fleiss JL, Gross AJ (1991) Meta-analysis in epidemiology, with special reference to studies of the association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and lung cancer. J Clin Epidemiol 44:127–129
Galbraith RF (1988) A note on graphical presentation of estimated odds ratios from several trials. Stat Med 7:889–894
Glass GV, Smith ML (1979) Meta-analysis of research on class size and achievement. Educ Evol Policy Anal 1:2–16
Glenny AM, Altman DG, Song F, Sakarovitch C, Deeks JJ, D’Amico RD, Bradburn M, Eastwood AJ (2005) Indirect comparisons of competing interventions. Health Technol Assess 9:1–148
Greenhalgh T (1997) How to read a paper. The Medline database. BMJ 315:180–183
Greenland S, Robins JM (1985) Estimation of common effect parameter from sparse follow-up data. Biometrics 41:55–68
Gruppo Italiano per lo Studio della Streptochinasi nell’Infarto Miocardico (GISSI) (1986) Effectiveness of intravenous thrombolytic treatment in acute myocardial infarction. Lancet 1:397–402
Higgins JPT, Thompson SG (2002) Quantifying heterogeneity in a meta-analysis. Stat Med 21:1539–1558
Higgins JPT, Thompson SG (2004) Controlling the risk of spurious findings from meta-regression. Stat Med 23:1662–1682
Hunter JE, Schmidt FL (2004) Methods in meta-analysis, 2nd edn. Sage Public Inc, Thousand Oaks
Ioannides JP (2005) Contradicted and initially stronger effects in highly cited clinical research. JAMA 294:210–228
Jones DR (1995) Meta-analysis: weighing the evidence. Stat Med 14:137–139
Khan KS, Daya S, Jadad AR (1996) The importance of quality of primary studies in producing unbiased systematic reviews. Arch Int Med 156:661–666
Lau J, Schmid CH, Chalmers TC (1995) Cumulative meta-analysis of clinical trials builds evidence for exemplary medical care. J Clin Epidemiol 48:45–57
Leandro G (2005) Meta-analysis in medical research. BMJ books, London
Lefebvre C, McDonald S (1996) Development of a sensitive search strategy for reports of randomized trials in EMBASE. In: Paper presented at the fourth international Cochrane colloquium, Adelaide, Australia, 20–24 Oct 1996
LeLorier J, Gregoire G, Benhaddad A, Lapierre J, Derderien F (1997) Discrepancies between meta-analyses and subsequent large randomized controlled trials. N Engl J Med 337:536–542
Lumley T (2002) Network meta-analysis for indirect treatment comparisons. Stat Med 21:2313–2324
Meta-analysis Mark X. Microsoft’s Excel. Accessed 15 Dec 2011
National Council of Social Studies. Statistical and power analysis software. http://www.ncss.com/metaanal.html. Accessed 15 Dec 2011
Oxman AD, Guyatt G (1988) Guidelines for reading reviews. Can Med Assoc J 138:697–703
R. http://cran.r-project.org. Accessed 15 Dec 2011
Riegelman RK (2005) Meta-analysis. In: Riegelman RK (ed) Studying a study & testing a test, 2005th edn. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, Philadelphia, pp 99–115
S-plus.http://www.mathsoft.com/splus. Accessed 15 Dec 2011
SAS. http://www.prw.le.ac.uk/epidemiol/personal/ajs22/meta/macros.sas. Accessed 15 Dec 2011
Schmid CH, Stark PC, Berlin JA, Landais P, Lau J (2004) Meta-regression detected associations between heterogeneous treatment effects and study-level, but not patient-level, factors. J Clin Epidemiol 57:683–697
Shipley MJ, Pocock SJ, Marmot MG (1991) Does plasma cholesterol concentration predict mortality from coronary heart disease in elderly people? 18 year follow-up in Whitehall study. BMJ 303:89–92
SPSS Statistical Software. http://www.spss.com. Accessed 15 Dec 2011
Stampfer MJ, Goldhaber SZ, Yusuf S (1982) Effects of intravenous streptokinase on acute myocardial infarction: pooled results from randomized trials. N Engl J Med 307:1180–1182
Stata, statistical software for professionals. http://www.stat.com. Accessed 15 Dec 2011
StatsDirect. http://www.camcode.com. Accessed 15 Dec 2011
StatXact. http://www.cytel.com/products/statxact/statact1.html. Accessed 15 Dec 2011
Stein RA (1998) Meta-analysis from one FOA reviewer’s perspective. Proceedings of the Biopharmaceutical Section of the American Statistical Association 2:34–38
Straus SE, Sackett DL (1998) Using research findings in clinical practice. BMJ 317:339–342
Tang JL, Liu JL (2000) Misleading funnel plots for detection of bias in meta-analysis. J Clin Epidemiol 53:477–484
Temple R (1999) Meta-analyses and epidemiological studies in drug development and postmarketing studies. JAMA 281:841–844
Terrin N, Schmid CH, Griffith JL, D’Agostino RB, Selker HP (2003) External validation of predictive models: a comparison of logistic regression, classification trees, and neural networks. J Clin Epidemiol 56:721–729
Thompson SG (1995) Why sources of heterogeneity should be investigated. In: Chalmers I, Altman DG (eds) Systematic reviews. BMJ Publishing Group, London, pp 48–63
True Epistat. http://ic.net/~biomware/biohp2te.htm. Accessed 15 Dec 2011
Turnbul F for the Blood Pressure Lowering Trialists’ Collaboration (2003) Effects of different blood pressure lowering regimens on major cardiovascular events: results of prospectively designed overviews of randomised controlled trials. Lancet 362:1527–1535
Van Houwelingen HC, Arends LR, Stijnen T (2002) Advanced methods in meta-analysis: multivariate approach and meta-regression. Stat Med 21:589–624
Yusuf S, Peto R, Lewis J, Collins R, Sleight P (1985) Beta blockade during and after myocardial infarction: an overview of the randomized trials. Prog Cardiovasc Dis 27:335–371
Zhou X, Fang J, Yu C, Xu Z, Lu Y (2003) Meta-analysis. In: Lu Y, Fang J (eds) Advanced medical statistics. World Scientific, River Edge, pp 233–316
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cleophas, T.J., Zwinderman, A.H. (2012). Meta-analysis, Review and Update of Methodologies. In: Statistics Applied to Clinical Studies. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2863-9_33
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2863-9_33
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-007-2862-2
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-2863-9
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)