Meta-analysis in clinical trials revisited
Open accessAbstract
In this paper, we revisit a 1986 article we published in this Journal, Meta-Analysis in Clinical Trials, where we introduced a random-effects model to summarize the evidence about treatment efficacy from a number of related clinical trials. Because of its simplicity and ease of implementation, our approach has been widely used (with more than 12,000 citations to date) and the "DerSimonian and Laird method" is now often referred to as the 'standard approach' or a 'popular' method for meta-analysis in medical and clinical research. The method is especially useful for providing an overall effect estimate and for characterizing the heterogeneity of effects across a series of studies. Here, we review the background that led to the original 1986 article, briefly describe the random-effects approach for meta-analysis, explore its use in various settings and trends over time and recommend a refinement to the method using a robust variance estimator for testing overall effect. We conclude with a discussion of repurposing the method for Big Data meta-analysis and Genome Wide Association Studies for studying the importance of genetic variants in complex diseases.
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- Authors
- DerSimonian, R., & Laird, N.
- Affiliations
- National Institutes of Health (US)
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- DerSimonian, Rebecca
- ORCID
- Laird, Nan
- Venue
- Contemporary Clinical Trials
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2015-11
- Volume
- 45
- Issue
- Pt A
- Pages
- 139-145
- ISSN
- 1551-7144 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4639420
- OpenAlex
- W2161701454
- Cited by
- 2,677
- References
- 32
- Citations by year
- 2026: 247 · 2025: 316 · 2024: 289 · 2023: 293 · 2022: 328 · 2021: 371 · 2020: 319 · 2019: 181 · 2018: 150 · 2017: 132 · 2016: 44 · 2015: 3 · 2013: 1 · 2012: 3
- FWCI
- 98.91
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Contemporary Clinical Trials (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institutes of Health (Z99 AI999999)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Meta-analysis and systematic reviews
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Statistical Methods in Clinical Trials
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Statistical Methods in Epidemiology
- Keywords
- meta-analysis, random effects models, treatment efficacy, treatment effect heterogeneity, robust variance estimation, genome-wide association study, genetic variants, complex diseases
- MeSH terms
- Clinical Trials as Topic, Humans, Research Design, Meta-Analysis as Topic, Models, Statistical, Genome-Wide Association Study
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