pairwise | R Documentation |
This function transforms data that are given in wide or long
arm-based format (e.g. input format for WinBUGS) to a
contrast-based format that is needed, for example, as input to R function
netmeta
from R package netmeta. The function
can transform data with binary, continuous, or generic outcomes as well as
incidence rates from arm-based to contrast-based format.
pairwise(
treat,
event,
n,
mean,
sd,
TE,
seTE,
time,
agent,
dose,
data = NULL,
studlab,
incr = gs("incr"),
method = "Inverse",
method.incr = gs("method.incr"),
allstudies = gs("allstudies"),
reference.group,
keep.all.comparisons,
sep.ag = "*",
varnames = c("TE", "seTE"),
append = !is.null(data),
addincr = gs("addincr"),
allincr = gs("allincr"),
warn = FALSE,
warn.deprecated = gs("warn.deprecated"),
...
)
treat |
A list or vector with treatment information for individual treatment arms (see Details). |
event |
A list or vector with information on number of events for individual treatment arms (see Details). |
n |
A list or vector with information on number of observations for individual treatment arms (see Details). |
mean |
A list or vector with estimated means for individual treatment arms (see Details). |
sd |
A list or vector with information on the standard deviation for individual treatment arms (see Details). |
TE |
A list or vector with estimated treatment effects for individual treatment arms (see Details). |
seTE |
A list or vector with standard errors of estimated treatment effect for individual treatment arms (see Details). |
time |
A list or vector with information on person time at risk for individual treatment arms (see Details). |
agent |
A list or vector with agent information for individual treatment arms (see Details). |
dose |
A list or vector with dose information for individual treatment arms (see Details). |
data |
An optional data frame containing the study information. |
studlab |
A vector with study labels (optional). |
incr |
A numerical value which is added to cell frequencies for studies with a zero cell count, see Details. |
method |
A character string indicating which method is to be
used to calculate treatment estimates. Either |
method.incr |
A character string indicating which continuity
correction method should be used ( |
allstudies |
A logical indicating if studies with zero or all
events in two treatment arms are to be included in the
meta-analysis (applies only if |
reference.group |
Reference treatment (first treatment is used if argument is missing). |
keep.all.comparisons |
A logical indicating whether all pairwise comparisons or only comparisons with the study-specific reference group should be kept ('basic parameters'). |
sep.ag |
A character used as separator between agent in dose to create treatment labels. |
varnames |
Character vector of length 2 with the variable names for the treatment estimate and its standard error; by default, "TE" and "seTE". |
append |
Either a logical indicating whether variables from the dataset
provided in argument |
addincr |
Deprecated argument (replaced by 'method.incr');
see |
allincr |
Deprecated argument (replaced by 'method.incr');
see |
warn |
A logical indicating whether warnings should be printed (e.g., if studies are excluded due to only providing a single treatment arm). |
warn.deprecated |
A logical indicating whether warnings should be printed if deprecated arguments are used. |
... |
Additional arguments passed-through to the functions to calculate effects. |
The pairwise function transforms data given in (wide or long)
arm-based format into the contrast-based format which consists of
pairwise comparisons and is needed, for example, as input to the
netmeta
function.
The pairwise function can transform data with binary outcomes
(using the metabin
function from R package meta),
continuous outcomes (metacont
function), incidence
rates (metainc
function), and generic outcomes
(metagen
function). Depending on the outcome, the
following arguments are mandatory:
treat, event, n (see metabin
);
treat, n, mean, sd (see metacont
);
treat, event, time (see metainc
);
treat, TE, seTE (see metagen
).
Argument treat
is mandatory to identify the individual
treatments. The other arguments contain outcome specific
data. These arguments must be either lists (wide arm-based format,
i.e., one row per study) or vectors (long arm-based format,
i.e., multiple rows per study) of the same length.
For the wide arm-based format, each list consists of as many
vectors of the same length as the multi-arm study with the largest
number of treatments. If a single multi-arm study has five arms,
five vectors have to be provided for each lists. Two-arm studies
have entries with NA
for the third and subsequent
vectors. Each list entry is a vector with information for each
individual study; i.e., the length of this vector corresponds to
the total number of studies incorporated in the network
meta-analysis. Typically, list elements are part of a data frame
(argument data
, optional); see Examples. An optional vector
with study labels can be provided which can be part of the data
frame.
In the long arm-based format, argument studlab
is mandatory
to identify rows contributing to individual studies.
Additional arguments for meta-analysis functions can be provided
using argument '...'. The most important argument is sm
defining the summary measure. More information on this and other
arguments is given in the help pages of R functions
metabin
, metacont
,
metainc
, and metagen
, respectively.
For standardised mean differences (argument sm = "SMD"
),
equations (4) and (5) in Crippa & Orsini (2016) are used to
calculated SMDs and standard errors. These equations guarantee
consistent SMDs and standard errors for multi-arm studies. Note,
the summary measure is actually Cohen's d as Hedges' g is not
consistent in multi-arm studies.
For binary outcomes, 0.5 is added to all cell frequencies (odds
ratio) or only the number of events (risk ratio) for studies with a
zero cell count. For odds ratio and risk ratio, treatment estimates
and standard errors are only calculated for studies with zero or
all events in both groups if allstudies
is TRUE
. This
continuity correction is used both to calculate individual study
results with confidence limits and to conduct meta-analysis based
on the inverse variance method. For the risk difference, 0.5 is
only added to all cell frequencies to calculate the standard error.
For incidence rates, 0.5 is added to all cell frequencies for the incidence rate ratio as summary measure. For the incidence risk difference, 0.5 is only added to all cell frequencies to calculate the standard error.
The value of pairwise is a data frame with as many rows as there
are pairwise comparisons. For each study with p treatments,
p*(p-1) / 2 contrasts are generated. Each row contains the
treatment effect (TE
), its standard error (seTE
), the
treatments compared ((treat1
), (treat2
)) and the
study label ((studlab
)). Further columns are added according
to type of data.
All variables from the original dataset are also part of the output
dataset if argument append = TRUE
. If data are provided in the long
arm-based format, the value of a variable can differ between treatment arms;
for example, the mean age or percentage of women in the treatment arm. In
this situation, two variables instead of one variable will be included
in the output dataset. The values "1" and "2" are added to the
names for these variables, e.g. "mean.age1" and "mean.age2" for the
mean age.
In general, any variable names in the original dataset that are identical to the main variable names (i.e., "TE", "seTE", ...) will be renamed to variable names with ending ".orig".
A reduced dataset with basic comparisons (Rücker & Schwarzer,
2014) can be generated using argument keep.all.comparisons =
FALSE
. Furthermore, the reference group for the basic comparisons
can be specified with argument reference.group
.
R function netmeta
expects data in a
contrast-based format, where each row corresponds to a
comparison of two treatments and contains a measure of the
treatment effect comparing two treatments with standard error,
labels for the two treatments and an optional study label. In
contrast-based format, a three-arm study contributes three rows
with treatment comparison and corresponding standard error for
pairwise comparison A vs B, A vs C, and
B vs C whereas a four-arm study contributes six rows
/ pairwise comparisons: A vs B, A vs C,
..., C vs D.
Other programs for network meta-analysis in WinBUGS and Stata require data in an arm-based format, i.e. treatment estimate for each treatment arm instead of a difference of two treatments. A common (wide) arm-based format consists of one data row per study, containing treatment and other necessary information for all study arms. For example, a four-arm study contributes one row with four treatment estimates and corresponding standard errors for treatments A, B, C, and D. Another possible arm-based format is a long format where each row corresponds to a single study arm. Accordingly, in the long arm-based format a study contributes as many rows as treatments considered in the study.
A data frame with the following columns:
TE |
Treatment estimate comparing treatment 'treat1' and 'treat2'. |
seTE |
Standard error of treatment estimate. |
studlab |
Study labels. |
treat1 |
First treatment in comparison. |
treat2 |
Second treatment in comparison. |
event1 |
Number of events for first treatment arm (for metabin and metainc). |
event2 |
Number of events for second treatment arm (for metabin and metainc). |
n1 |
Number of observations for first treatment arm (for metabin and metacont). |
n2 |
Number of observations for second treatment arm (for metabin and metacont). |
mean1 |
Estimated mean for first treatment arm (for metacont). |
mean2 |
Estimated mean for second treatment arm (for metacont). |
sd1 |
Standard deviation for first treatment arm (for metacont). |
sd2 |
Standard deviation for second treatment arm (for metacont). |
TE1 |
Estimated treatment effect for first treatment arm (for metagen). |
TE2 |
Estimated treatment effect for second treatment arm (for metagen). |
seTE1 |
Standard error of estimated treatment effect for first treatment arm (for metagen). |
seTE2 |
Standard error of estimated treatment effect for second treatment arm (for metagen). |
time1 |
Person time at risk for first treatment arm (for metainc). |
time2 |
Person time at risk for second treatment arm (for metainc). |
agent1 |
First agent in comparison. |
agent2 |
Second agent in comparison. |
dose1 |
Dose of first agent in comparison. |
dose2 |
Dose of second agent in comparison. |
All variables from the original dataset are also part of the output dataset; see Details.
This function must not be confused with netpairwise
which can be used to conduct pairwise meta-analyses for all
comparisons with direct evidence in a network meta-analysis.
Gerta Rückergerta.ruecker@uniklinik-freiburg.de, Guido Schwarzer guido.schwarzer@uniklinik-freiburg.de
Crippa A, Orsini N (2016): Dose-response meta-analysis of differences in means. BMC Medical Research Methodology, 16:91.
longarm
, metabin
,
metacont
, metagen
,
metainc
, netmeta
,
netgraph.netmeta
,
p0 <- pairwise(studlab = study, treat = treatment,
n = ni, mean = mi, sd = sdi, data = dat.senn2013,
append = c("study", "comment"))
head(p0)
# Meta-analysis of studies comparing metformin to placebo
metagen(p0, subset = treat1 == "metformin" & treat2 == "placebo")
## Not run:
# Example using continuous outcomes (internal call of function
# metacont)
#
data(Franchini2012, package = "netmeta")
# Transform data from arm-based format to contrast-based format
p1 <- pairwise(list(Treatment1, Treatment2, Treatment3),
n = list(n1, n2, n3),
mean = list(y1, y2, y3), sd = list(sd1, sd2, sd3),
data = Franchini2012, studlab = Study)
p1
# Conduct network meta-analysis
library("netmeta")
#
net1 <- netmeta(p1)
net1
# Draw network graphs
#
netgraph(net1, points = TRUE, cex.points = 3, cex = 1.5,
thickness = "se.common")
netgraph(net1, points = TRUE, cex.points = 3, cex = 1.5,
plastic = TRUE, thickness = "se.common",
iterate = TRUE)
netgraph(net1, points = TRUE, cex.points = 3, cex = 1.5,
plastic = TRUE, thickness = "se.common",
iterate = TRUE, start = "eigen")
# Example using generic outcomes (internal call of function
# metagen)
#
# Calculate standard error for means y1, y2, y3
Franchini2012$se1 <- with(Franchini2012, sqrt(sd1^2 / n1))
Franchini2012$se2 <- with(Franchini2012, sqrt(sd2^2 / n2))
Franchini2012$se3 <- with(Franchini2012, sqrt(sd3^2 / n3))
# Transform data from arm-based format to contrast-based format
# using means and standard errors (note, argument 'sm' has to be
# used to specify that argument 'TE' is a mean difference)
p2 <- pairwise(list(Treatment1, Treatment2, Treatment3),
TE = list(y1, y2, y3), seTE = list(se1, se2, se3),
n = list(n1, n2, n3),
data = Franchini2012, studlab = Study,
sm = "MD")
p2
# Compare pairwise objects p1 (based on continuous outcomes) and p2
# (based on generic outcomes)
#
all.equal(p1[, c("TE", "seTE", "studlab", "treat1", "treat2")],
p2[, c("TE", "seTE", "studlab", "treat1", "treat2")])
# Same result as network meta-analysis based on continuous outcomes
# (object net1)
net2 <- netmeta(p2)
net2
# Example with binary data
#
data(smokingcessation)
# Transform data from arm-based format to contrast-based format
# (interal call of metabin function). Argument 'sm' has to be used
# for odds ratio as risk ratio (sm = "RR") is default of metabin
# function.
#
p3 <- pairwise(list(treat1, treat2, treat3),
list(event1, event2, event3), list(n1, n2, n3),
data = smokingcessation,
sm = "OR")
p3
# Conduct network meta-analysis
#
net3 <- netmeta(p3)
net3
# Example with incidence rates
#
data(dietaryfat)
# Transform data from arm-based format to contrast-based format
#
p4 <- pairwise(list(treat1, treat2, treat3),
list(d1, d2, d3), time = list(years1, years2, years3),
studlab = ID,
data = dietaryfat)
p4
# Conduct network meta-analysis using incidence rate ratios (sm =
# "IRR"). Note, the argument 'sm' is not necessary as this is the
# default in R function metainc called internally.
#
net4 <- netmeta(p4, sm = "IRR")
summary(net4)
# Example with long data format
#
data(Woods2010)
# Transform data from long arm-based format to contrast-based
# format Argument 'sm' has to be used for odds ratio as summary
# measure; by default the risk ratio is used in the metabin
# function called internally.
#
p5 <- pairwise(treatment, event = r, n = N,
studlab = author, data = Woods2010, sm = "OR")
p5
# Conduct network meta-analysis
net5 <- netmeta(p5)
net5
## End(Not run)
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