Would it be possible to conduct a systematic review with RCTs that have the same Population, the same intervention (Low GI diet) but some studies compare the Low GI diet to the usual diet and others to a High GI diet. I am investigating whether a Low GI diet can have beneficial effects for a medical condition.
It depends on your research question. If you seek to evaluate the effects of Low GI diet compared to any other diet (or intervention) then you must include both types of RCTs in your systematic review.
However, when it comes to the statistical analysis of studies (meta-analysis) you have to consider whether it is reasonable or clinically relevant to pool both types of RCTs in the same analysis (forest plot).
In your case, my take would probably be to perform two separate meta-analyses, one versus usual diet and one versus High GI diet.
It depends on your research question. If you seek to evaluate the effects of Low GI diet compared to any other diet (or intervention) then you must include both types of RCTs in your systematic review.
However, when it comes to the statistical analysis of studies (meta-analysis) you have to consider whether it is reasonable or clinically relevant to pool both types of RCTs in the same analysis (forest plot).
In your case, my take would probably be to perform two separate meta-analyses, one versus usual diet and one versus High GI diet.
I will take that into consideration as I am evaluating the effects of a Low GI diet over other diets. Thank you for taking the time to answer my question.
I agreed to Thomas Karagiannis . If the population were similar across the studies in the systematic review. You can report the synthetic results in two pairwise meta-analysis (normal vs low-GI diet; normal vs high-GI diet). Or you can do a network meta-analysis to compare them together.
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