SynthesisAmerican journal of epidemiology2022
A Guide to Estimating the Reference Range From a Meta-Analysis Using Aggregate or Individual Participant Data.
Synthesis in American journal of epidemiology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Defining Reference Values for Skeletal Muscle Metrics on Abdominal CT Using Data From Healthy Young Adult Populations: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.AJR. American journal of roentgenology · 2025Pooled it
- What Are the Normal Serum Creatine Kinase Values for Skeletal Muscle? A Worldwide Systematic Review.European journal of neurology · 2025Pooled it
- Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance reference values ("normal values") in cardiovascular magnetic resonance: 2025 update.Journal of cardiovascular magnetic resonance : official journal of the Society for Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance · 2025Guideline
- RIMeta: An R shiny tool for estimating the reference interval from a meta-analysis.Research synthesis methods · 2023Pooled it
- Pediatric Reference Limits for Holter Monitor Heart Rate Variability Parameters: Defined Using Meta-Analysis.Pediatric cardiology · 2026Article
- Estimating reference intervals from an IPD meta-analysis using quantile regression.BMC medical research methodology · 2024Article
- 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
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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Abstract
Clinicians frequently must decide whether a patient's measurement reflects that of a healthy "normal" individual. Thus, the reference range is defined as the interval in which some proportion (frequently 95%) of measurements from a healthy population is expected to fall. One can estimate it from a single study or preferably from a meta-analysis of multiple studies to increase generalizability. This range differs from the confidence interval for the pooled mean and the prediction interval for a new study mean in a meta-analysis, which do not capture natural variation across healthy individuals. Methods for estimating the reference range from a meta-analysis of aggregate data that incorporates both within- and between-study variations were recently proposed. In this guide, we present 3 approaches for estimating the reference range: one frequentist, one Bayesian, and one empirical. Each method can be applied to either aggregate or individual-participant data meta-analysis, with the latter being the gold standard when available. We illustrate the application of these approaches to data from a previously published individual-participant data meta-analysis of studies measuring liver stiffness by transient elastography in healthy individuals between 2006 and 2016.
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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.