Software for Meta Regression

描述（由申请人提供）：元分析在制定政策和规划新研究中起着关键作用。在老年学中，荟萃分析已经在一些领域提出了治疗建议或新的见解，如正常衰老的记忆丧失；识别、预测和治疗阿尔茨海默病和痴呆症；阿司匹林与中风的二级预防；骨质疏松症的药物治疗；帕金森氏症等等。虽然每个Meta分析都关注平均治疗效果和从一项研究到下一项研究的治疗效果的变化，但研究人员往往主要关注前者。但事实上，不同研究之间治疗效果的差异可能与平均治疗效果一样重要，有时甚至更重要。如果一种治疗方法降低了年轻患者的死亡风险，同时增加了老年患者的死亡风险，那么平均效果充其量是误导。如果我们需要在两种对患者有潜在帮助的干预措施之间做出选择，我们需要问的问题不是每一种干预措施是否都有效，而是它是否比另一种更有效。该项目的目标是开发用于Meta回归的软件，该技术用于研究治疗效果的变化并解决这些问题。该软件将集成到商业上成功的计算机程序中，用于元分析，该程序是在早期的SBIR项目下开发的。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Meta analysis plays a key role in setting policy and in planning new research. In gerontology, meta analyses have led to treatment recommendations or new insights in such areas as memory loss with normal aging; identifying, predicting, and treating Alzheimer's disease and dementia; aspirin and the secondary prevention of stroke; drug therapies for osteoporosis; and Parkinson's Disease, among many others. While every Meta analysis is concerned both with the average treatment effect and with the variation in treatment effects from one study to the next, researchers tend to focus primarily on the former. In fact, though, the variation in the treatment effect from one study to the next may be as important, and sometimes more important, than the average treatment effect. If a treatment reduces the risk of death for younger patients while increasing the risk of death for older patients, then the average effect is, at best, misleading. If we need to choose between two potentially helpful interventions for patients, the question we need to ask is not whether or not each one works at all, but whether it works better than the other. The goal of this project is to develop software for Meta regression, the technique developed to study the variation in treatment effects and address these questions. This software will be integrated into a commercially successful computer program for Meta analysis developed under an earlier SBIR project.