Reproducibility of meta-analytic results in systematic reviews of interventions: meta-research study

作者：Phi‐Yen Nguyen, Joanne E. McKenzie, Zainab Alqaidoom, Daniel G. Hamilton, David Moher, Matthew J. Page · 发表于：BMJ Medicine · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1136/bmjmed-2025-002024 · 被引用次数：3 · 研究领域：Meta-analysis and systematic reviews、Animal testing and alternatives、Academic Writing and Publishing

Objective: To determine how often meta-analyses of effects of interventions are reproducible. Design: Meta-research study. Setting: Systematic reviews with meta-analyses of the effects of health, social, behavioural, or educational interventions indexed in five databases (PubMed, Science Citation Index, Social Sciences Citation Index, Scopus, and Education Collection), 2 November to 2 December 2020. Population: 296 reviews meeting the inclusion criteria formed the overall sample of the study. 175/296 (59%) reviews included a forest plot from Review Manager and were considered inherently reproducible. The remaining 121/296 (41%) reviews constituted the reproduction sample. Main outcome measures: Original review authors were contacted to obtain meta-analysis data files, and analytic code used to generate the first reported (index) meta-analysis; if not provided, the necessary data and statistical details of the meta-analysis methods were extracted from the review. Two investigators independently reproduced each review's first reported meta-analysis using the original computational steps and analytic code. Meta-analyses were classified as fully reproducible if the difference between the original and reproduced summary estimates and 95% confidence interval (CI) widths was less than 10%. Differences in meta-analysis results were classified as meaningful if there was a change in direction of the summary effect estimate or if the 95% CI included the null, which may alter the interpr...