Individual Patient Data Meta-Analysis Is Needed in Chinese Medical Research

Publication biases and collection limitations are the main disadvantages of a traditional meta-analysis based on aggregate patient data（APD）from published articles.Individual patient data（IPD）meta-analysis,as the gold standard of systematic review,is a possible alternative in this context.However,the publications relative to IPD meta-analyses are still rare compared with the traditional ones,especially in the research oriented to Chinese medicine（CM）.In this article,the strengths and detailed functioning of IPD meta-analysis are described.Furthermore,the need for IPD meta-analysis to assess the treatments based on CM was also discussed.Compared with the traditional APD meta-analysis,the IPD meta-analysis might give a more accurate and unbiased assessment and is worth to be recommended to CM researchers.

Lutetium in prostate cancer: Reconstruction of patient-level data from published trials and generation of a multi-trial Kaplan-Meier curve

BACKGROUND Lutetium has been shown to be an important potential innovation in pre-treated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.Two clinical trials have evaluated lutetium thus far(therap and vision with 99 and 385 patients,respectively),but their results are discordant.AIM To synthetize the available evidence on the effectiveness of lutetium in pre-treated metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer;and to test the application of a new artificial intelligence technique that synthetizes effectiveness based on reconstructed patient-level data.METHODS We employed a new artificial intelligence method(shiny method)to pool the survival data of these two trials and evaluate to what extent the lutetium cohorts differed from one another.The shiny technique employs an original reconstruction of individual patient data from the Kaplan-Meier curves.The progression-free survival graphs of the two lutetium cohorts were analyzed and compared.RESULTS The hazard ratio estimated was in favor of the vision trial;the difference was statistically significant(P<0.001).These results indicate that further studies on lutetium are needed because the survival data of the two trials published thus far are conflicting.CONCLUSION Our study confirms the feasibility of reconstructing patient-level data from survival graphs in order to generate a survival statistics.

单个病例数据Meta分析引用情况研究

目的:研究单个病例数据Meta分析(individual patient data meta analysis,IPDMA)引用情况,以期了解目前IPDMA研究的发展趋势,为学者开展相关研究提供借鉴和参考。方法:通过检索Web of Science获取IPDMA文献引用的相关信息。用VOSviewer 1.6.10软件对纳入研究的共被引期刊、作者和文献进行提取,并生成作者合作网络图和期刊密度图。采用CiteSpace V软件生成共被引文献网络图,并进行共被引文献的突发性检测。结果:共纳入IPDMA研究552篇,共被引次数最多的期刊为Lancet(1192次),前20个期刊中,6个来自英国,14个来自美国,前10位期刊中,有7个期刊的影响因子大于18.000。共有12950个共被引作者,Higgins JPT是共被引次数最多的作者,但只有3.28%的作者共被引次数超过5次。主要共被引作者形成6个合作团体,且各团体内部成员之间合作紧密。前10位共被引的文献大部分为IPDMA方法学论文,其中Higgins JPT等2003年发表于BMJ论文共被引次数最高。结论:期刊的共被引次数之间存在较大差异,高被引的期刊数量较少。虽然共被引作者很多,但缺乏突出贡献的作者。