ArticleJournal of clinical epidemiology2019
Borrowing of strength from indirect evidence in 40 network meta-analyses.
Article in Journal of clinical epidemiology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Multivariate meta-analysis of critical care meta-analyses: a meta-epidemiological study.BMC medical research methodology · 2021Pooled it
- Iron preparations for women of reproductive age with iron deficiency anaemia in pregnancy (FRIDA): a systematic review and network meta-analysis.The Lancet. Haematology · 2021Pooled it
- Comparative Effectiveness of Mind-Body Exercise Modalities on Pain Intensity and Fatigue in Patients with Non-Neuropathic Cancer-Related Pain: A Systematic Review and Network Meta-Analysis.Journal of pain research · 2026Review
- Non-parametric Bayesian approach to multiple treatment comparisons in network meta-analysis with application to comparisons of anti-depressants.Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series C, Applied statistics · 2024Article
- Assessing and visualizing fragility of clinical results with binary outcomes in R using the fragility package.PloS one · 2022Article
- Predictive P-score for treatment ranking in Bayesian network meta-analysis.BMC medical research methodology · 2021Article
- Evidence inconsistency degrees of freedom in Bayesian network meta-analysis.Journal of biopharmaceutical statistics · 2021Article
- Prior Choices of Between-Study Heterogeneity in Contemporary Bayesian Network Meta-analyses: an Empirical Study.Journal of general internal medicine · 2021Article
- Fragility index of network meta-analysis with application to smoking cessation data.Journal of clinical epidemiology · 2020Article
- Progression from being at-risk to psychosis: next steps.NPJ schizophrenia · 2020Review
- On evidence cycles in network meta-analysis.Statistics and its interface · 2020Article
- Perspective: Network Meta-analysis Reaches Nutrition Research: Current Status, Scientific Concepts, and Future Directions.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesNetwork meta-analysis (NMA) is increasingly being used to synthesize direct and indirect evidence and help decision makers simultaneously compare multiple treatments. We empirically evaluate the incremental gain in precision achieved by incorporating indirect evidence in NMAs. STUDY DESIGN AND
settingWe performed both network and pairwise meta-analyses on 40 published data sets of multiple-treatment comparisons. Their results were compared using the recently proposed borrowing of strength (BoS) statistic, which quantifies the percentage reduction in the uncertainty of the effect estimate when adding indirect evidence to an NMA.
resultsWe analyzed 915 possible treatment comparisons, from which 484 (53%) had no direct evidence (BoS = 100%). In 181 comparisons with only one study contributing direct evidence, NMAs resulted in reduced precision (BoS < 0) and no appreciable improvements in precision (0 < BoS < 30%) for 104 (57.5%) and 23 (12.7%) comparisons, respectively. In 250 comparisons with at least two studies contributing direct evidence, NMAs provided increased precision with BoS ≥ 30% for 166 (66.4%) comparisons.
conclusionAlthough NMAs have the potential to provide more precise results than those only based on direct evidence, the incremental gain may reliably occur only when at least two head-to-head studies are available and treatments are well connected. Researchers should routinely report and compare the results from both network and pairwise meta-analyses.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.