Nicola Orsini: Dose-response meta-analysis of epidemiological data

Meta-analysis or quantitative reviews are essential tools for health care workers, researchers, and policy makers who want to keep up with the evidence that is accumulating in their field. Meta-analysis focuses on contrasting and combining results from different studies, in the hopes of identifying patterns among study results. An advanced topic in quantitative reviews is how to back calculate the possible exposure-disease relationship based on a set of published findings; typically a set of regression coefficients (i.e. log relative risk) with a certain variance/covariance structure. I will illustrate the regression models; highlight strengths and limitations; and present possible future developments. Further information and references available at www.imm.ki.se/biostatistics/glst/ .