Greetings fellow researchers,

I am embarking on a meta-analysis project to study the efficacy of a certain drug, let's call it "Drug A". My challenge lies in the limited and varied nature of the clinical trials available. So far, I have identified only three clinical trials conducted on Drug A. Two of these trials are double arm (comparing Drug A against a placebo), while one is a single arm trial.

I am grappling with how to best proceed with the analysis given the different study designs. I would like to harness as much data as possible from these trials to ensure my meta-analysis is robust. One approach I am considering is to extract single arm data from all three trials and analyze this, but I'm unsure if this approach is methodologically sound or if it introduces biases.

Does anyone have advice on whether this is an appropriate approach or if there are alternative strategies I should consider? Could I potentially combine the single-arm and two-arm trials in some way? And if so, what statistical methods or adjustments should I be aware of to correctly handle the different types of data?

Any insights or guidance would be highly appreciated.

Best regards.

Dr. Moiz Ahmed