Hi I am currently doing a systematic review and meta analysis comparing 3 PDE5 inhibitors for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, the studies are alll interventio vs placebo, however some
are flexible dosage and some are fixed dosage, how would I incorporate these dosages in a forest plot? Would I pool them all together? Or have two seperate forest plots, one competing fixed dosage and one comparing flexible dosage? Also I second question is would a traditional meta analysis or a network meta analysis Work best for my review? Bare in mind all trails compare against placebo
thanks
There's a meta-analysis of RCTs published in AJCN which examines the dose-response relationship between tree nuts on blood lipids, apolipoproteins, and blood pressure.
//To test dose-response relations, we plotted the relation between absolute nut intake (g/d) and the absolute mean difference in each outcome, with nonlinearity evaluated by using the F test of linear lack of fit. Fractional polynomial models were used to evaluate nonlinear dose-response relations, with the best-fitting model considered the one with the lowest deviance.//
Article Effects of tree nuts on blood lipids, apolipoproteins, and b...
You can perform a metaregression, and categorized the doses, with this analysis you can pooled the studies response together and see if the dose have changes in the outcome.
For the first question: perform subgroup analysis according to the treatment doses. Further, conduct metaregression.
For the second question: network meta-analysis could be conducted but at first perform traditional meta-analysis then network meta-analysis to compare between 3 PDE5 inhibitors.
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