ArticleResearch synthesis methods2021
Estimating the reference range from a meta-analysis.
Article in Research synthesis methods, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 7 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 7 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The establishment of lipid profiles reference ranges during pregnancy: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Reproductive biology and endocrinology : RB&E · 2025Pooled it
- What Are the Normal Serum Creatine Kinase Values for Skeletal Muscle? A Worldwide Systematic Review.European journal of neurology · 2025Pooled it
- Pooled it
- RIMeta: An R shiny tool for estimating the reference interval from a meta-analysis.Research synthesis methods · 2023Pooled it
- A Guide to Estimating the Reference Range From a Meta-Analysis Using Aggregate or Individual Participant Data.American journal of epidemiology · 2022Pooled it
- Estimating the reference interval from a fixed effects meta-analysis.Research synthesis methods · 2021Pooled it
- Non-invasive bladder function measures in healthy, asymptomatic female children and adolescents: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of pediatric urology · 2021Pooled it
- Estimating reference intervals from an IPD meta-analysis using quantile regression.BMC medical research methodology · 2024Article
- The Role and Limitations of the Reference Interval Within Clinical Chemistry and Its Reliability for Disease Detection.British journal of biomedical science · 2024Review
- An improved Bayesian approach to estimating the reference interval from a meta-analysis: Directly monitoring the marginal quantiles and characterizing their uncertainty.Research synthesis methods · 2023Article
- Radiographic Measures for the Assessment of Frontal and Sagittal Knee Alignments and the Associated Normality Values: A Meta-Analysis.Journal of chiropractic medicine · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Often clinicians are interested in determining whether a subject's measurement falls within a normal range, defined as a range of values of a continuous outcome which contains some proportion (eg, 95%) of measurements from a healthy population. Several studies in the biomedical field have estimated reference ranges based on a meta-analysis of multiple studies with healthy individuals. However, the literature currently gives no guidance about how to estimate the reference range of a new subject in such settings. Instead, meta-analyses of such normative range studies typically report the pooled mean as a reference value, which does not incorporate natural variation across healthy individuals in different studies. We present three approaches to calculating the normal reference range of a subject from a meta-analysis of normally or lognormally distributed outcomes: a frequentist random effects model, a Bayesian random effects model, and an empirical approach. We present the results of a simulation study demonstrating that the methods perform well under a variety of scenarios, though users should be cautious when the number of studies is small and between-study heterogeneity is large. Finally, we apply these methods to two examples: pediatric time spent awake after sleep onset and frontal subjective postural vertical measurements.
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Registered trials
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