Clinical decision-making requires synthesis of evidence from literature reviews focused on a specific theme. Evidence synthesis is performed with qualitative assessments and systematic reviews of randomized clinical trials, typically covering statistical pooling with pairwise meta-analyses. These methods include adjusted indirect comparison meta-analysis, network meta-analysis, and mixed-treatm...

The metafor package provides functions for conducting meta-analyses in R. The package includes functions for fitting the meta-analytic fixedand random-effects models and allows for the inclusion of moderators variables (study-level covariates) in these models. Meta-regression analyses with continuous and categorical moderators can be conducted in this way. Functions for the Mantel-Haenszel and ...

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses are increasingly common. This article aims to provide guidance for people conducting systematic reviews relevant to the healthcare of older people. An awareness of these issues will also help people reading systematic reviews to determine whether the results will influence their clinical practice. It is essential that systematic reviews are performed by a te...

BACKGROUND The quality of meta-analyses (MAs) on depression remains uninvestigated. OBJECTIVE To assess the overall reporting and methodological qualities of MAs on depression and to explore potential factors influencing both qualities. METHODS MAs investigating epidemiology and interventions for depression published in the most recent year (2014-2015) were selected from PubMed, EMBASE, Psy...

Introduction: Many theories have been proposed about the etiology of autism. One is related to brain connectivity in patients with autism. Several studies have reported brain connectivity changes in autism disease. This study was performed on Electroencephalogram (EEG) studies that evaluated patients with autism, using functional brain connectivity, and compared them with typically-developing i...

Different estimation methods for covariance parameters in meta-analyses can result in conflicting p-values concerning the test of treatment effect. We propose a valid method to overcome this problem at least partially by introducing a new estimator for the standard deviation of the common treatment difference.