Vascular disease meta analyses

许多关于特定治疗的有效性和安全性的医学问题不能通过观察单个随机试验的结果来解决，而是取决于将研究该问题的许多试验的结果结合起来。通过使用荟萃分析实现了来自许多试验的数据的组合。这种荟萃分析通常是通过合并每个试验的总结结果来完成的，以获得治疗效果的总体总结。然而，我们的团队专门从每个相关试验中的每个个体参与者获得详细和完整的数据，然后分析所得数据集（这个数字一般都很大），以便更全面地分析不同临床情况下的疗效和安全性。我们现正采用这个方法研究：他汀类药物治疗各种疾病（如肌肉疼痛）与治疗有关（但未证实相关性）;阿替普酶（一种“破血栓”药物）;低剂量阿司匹林，以防止首次心脏病发作或中风，在显然健康的人，以及血管紧张素受体阻滞剂治疗马凡氏综合征（一种导致离开心脏的主动脉危险扩张的疾病）。

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).