Standard models for network meta-analysis simultaneously estimate multiple relative treatment effects. In practice, after estimation, these multiple estimates usually pass through a formal or informal selection procedure, eg, when researchers draw conclusions about the effects of the best performing treatment in the network. In this paper, we…

Network meta-analysis has been gaining prominence as an evidence synthesis method that enables the comprehensive synthesis and simultaneous comparison of multiple treatments. In many network meta-analyses, some of the constituent studies may have markedly different characteristics from the others, and may be influential enough to change the…

Time-course model-based network meta-analysis (MBNMA) has been proposed as a framework to combine treatment comparisons from a network of randomized controlled trials reporting outcomes at multiple time-points. This can explain heterogeneity/inconsistency that arises by pooling studies with different follow-up times and allow inclusion of studies…

Background: Stratified medicine seeks to identify patients most likely to respond to treatment. Individual participant data (IPD) network meta-analysis (NMA) models have greater power than individual trials to identify treatment-covariate interactions (TCIs). Treatment-covariate interactions contain "within" and "across" trial…

Network meta-analysis is used to simultaneously compare multiple treatments in a single analysis. However, network meta-analyses may exhibit inconsistency, where direct and different forms of indirect evidence are not in agreement with each other, even after allowing for between-study heterogeneity. Models for network meta-analysis with random…

In network meta-analysis, the use of fixed baseline treatment effects (a priori independent) in a contrast-based approach is regularly preferred to the use of random baseline treatment effects (a priori dependent). That is because, often, there is not a need to model baseline treatment effects, which carry the risk of model misspecification.…

The use of individual patient data (IPD) in network meta-analysis (NMA) is becoming increasingly popular. However, as most studies do not report IPD, most NMAs are performed using aggregate data for at least some, if not all, of the studies. We investigate the benefits of including varying proportions of IPD studies in an NMA. Several models have…