Vascular disease meta analyses

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Many medical questions about the efficacy and safety of specific treatments cannot be addressed by looking at the results of a single randomized trial, and instead depend on combining the results of many trials that have studied that question. The combination of data from many trials is achieved through the use of meta-analysis. Such meta-analyses are typically done by combining the summary results from each trial in order to achieve an overall summary of the effects of a treatment. Our group specialises, however, in obtaining detailed and complete data from each individual participant included in each of the relevant trials, and then analysing the resulting dataset (which is generally very large) to obtain more comprehensive analyses of how treatment efficacy and safety varies in different clinical circumstances.We are now using this method to study the effects of: statin therapy on various conditions (such as muscle pain) that have been linked to treatment (but where the link is unproven); alteplase (a ‘clot-busting’ drug) after stroke; low-dose aspirin to prevent a first heart attack or stroke in apparently healthy people, and angiotensin-receptor blockers in Marfan Syndrome (a condition that causes the main artery leaving the heart to expand dangerously).