Publication bias threatens meta-analysis validity. It is often assessed via the funnel plot; an asymmetric plot implies small-study effects, and publication bias is one cause of the asymmetry. Egger's regression test is a widely used tool to quantitatively assess such asymmetry. It examines the association between the observed effect sizes and…

In medical sciences, a disease condition is typically associated with multiple risk and protective factors. Although many studies report results of multiple factors, nearly all meta-analyses separately synthesize the association between each factor and the disease condition of interest. The collected studies usually report different subsets of…

Bayesian statistical approaches to mixed treatment comparisons (MTCs) are becoming more popular because of their flexibility and interpretability. Many randomized clinical trials report multiple outcomes with possible inherent correlations. Moreover, MTC data are typically sparse (although richer than standard meta-analysis, comparing only two…