crossnma.model {crossnma} R Documentation

## Create JAGS model and data to perform cross network meta-analysis or meta-regression

### Description

This function creates a JAGS model and the needed data for cross-design and cross-format network meta-analysis or meta-regression of a binary outcome with the odds ratio as effect measure.

### Usage

crossnma.model(
trt,
study,
outcome,
n,
design,
cov1 = NULL,
cov2 = NULL,
cov3 = NULL,
bias = NULL,
unfav = NULL,
bias.covariate = NULL,
bias.group = NULL,
prt.data = NULL,
std.data = NULL,
reference = NULL,
trt.effect = "random",
cov1.ref = NULL,
cov2.ref = NULL,
cov3.ref = NULL,
reg0.effect = "independent",
regb.effect = "random",
regw.effect = "random",
split.regcoef = TRUE,
method.bias = NULL,
bias.type = NULL,
bias.effect = "common",
down.wgt = NULL,
prior = list(tau.trt = NULL, tau.reg0 = NULL, tau.regb = NULL, tau.regw = NULL,
tau.gamma = NULL, pi.high.rct = NULL, pi.low.rct = NULL, pi.high.nrs = NULL,
pi.low.nrs = NULL),
run.nrs = list(var.infl = 1, mean.shift = 0, trt.effect = "common", n.adapt = 2000,
n.iter = 10000, n.burnin = 4000, thin = 1, n.chains = 2),
quiet = TRUE
)


### Arguments

 trt Treatment variable in prt.data and std.data. study Study variable in prt.data and std.data. outcome Outcome variable in prt.data and std.data. n Number of participants in std.data. design Design variable in prt.data and std.data. cov1 Optional first covariate in prt.data and std.data to conduct network meta-regression (see Details). cov2 Optional second covariate in prt.data and std.data to conduct network meta-regression (see Details). cov3 Optional third covariate in prt.data and std.data to conduct network meta-regression (see Details). bias Variable with information on risk of bias in prt.data and std.data (can be provided when method.bias = 'adjust1' or 'adjust2'). Possible values of this variable are 'low', 'high' or 'unclear' (can be abbreviated). These values must be identical for all participants from the same study. unfav Variable in prt.data and std.data indicating the unfavored treatment in each study (can be provided when method.bias = 'adjust1' or 'adjust2'). The entries of this variable are either 0 (unfavored treatment) or 1 (favorable treatment or treatments). Each study should include only one 0 entry. The values need to be repeated for participants who take the same treatment. bias.covariate Variable in prt.data and std.data used to estimate the probability of bias (can be provided when method.bias = 'adjust1' or 'adjust2'). bias.group An optional variable in prt.data and std.data that indicates the bias effect in each study (can be provided when method.bias = 'adjust1' or 'adjust2'). The entries of these variables should be either 1 (study has inactive treatment and its estimate should be adjusted for bias effect), 2 (study has only active treatments and its estimate should be adjusted for bias effect (different from inactive bias effect) or 0 (study does not need any bias adjustment). The values need to be repeated for the participants assigned to the same treatment. Default is 1. prt.data An object of class data.frame containing the individual participant dataset. Each row contains the data of a single participant. The dataset needs to have the following columns: treatment, study identification, outcome (event and non-event), design. Additional columns might be required for certain analyses. std.data An object of class data.frame containing the study-level dataset. Each row represents the information of study arm. The dataset needs to have the following columns: treatment, study identification, outcome (number of events), sample size and design. Additional columns might be required for certain analyses. reference A character indicating the name of the reference treatment. When the reference is not specified, the first alphabetic treatment will be used as a reference in the analysis. trt.effect A character defining the model for the study-specific treatment effects. Options are 'random' (default) or 'common'. cov1.ref An optional value to center the first covariate which is only useful for a continuous covariate. Dichotomous covariates should be given NA value. The default is the overall minimum covariate value from all studies. cov2.ref An optional value to center the second covariate which is only useful for a continuous covariate. Dichotomous covariates should be given NA value. The default is the overall minimum covariate value from all studies. cov3.ref An optional value to center the third covariate which is only useful for a continuous covariate. Dichotomous covariates should be given NA value. The default is the overall minimum covariate value from all studies. reg0.effect An optional character (needed when at least cov1 is not NULL) indicating the relationship across studies for the prognostic effects expressed by the regression coefficient, (\beta_0), in a study j. Options are 'independent' or 'random'. We recommend using 'independent' (default). regb.effect An optional character (needed when at least cov1 is not NULL) indicating the relationship across treatments for the between-study regression coefficient (\beta^B). This parameter quantifies the treatment-mean covariate interaction. Options are 'independent', 'random' or 'common'. Default is 'random'. regw.effect An optional character (needed when at least cov1 is not NULL) indicating the relationship across treatments for the within-study regression coefficient (\beta^W). This parameter quantifies the treatment-covariate interaction effect at the individual level. Options are 'independent', 'random' and 'common'. Default is 'random'. split.regcoef A logical value (needed when at least cov1 is not NULL). If TRUE (default) the within- and between-study coefficients will be splitted in the analysis of prt.data. When the split.regcoef = FALSE, only a single regression coefficient will be estimated to represent both the between-studies and within-studies covariate effects. In this case, both arguments regb.effect and regw.effect need to be given the same option to model the single regression effect. method.bias A character for defining the method to combine randomized clinical trials (RCT) and non-randomized studies (NRS). Options are 'naive' for naive or unadjusted synthesize, 'prior' for using NRS evidence to construct priors for the relative treatment effects in RCTs analysis, or 'adjust1' and 'adjust2' to allow a bias adjustment. When only one design is available (either rct or nrs), this argument needs also to be specified to indicate whether unadjusted (naive) or bias-adjusted analysis (adjust1 or adjust2) should be applied. bias.type An optional character defining of bias on the treatment effect (required when method.bias='adjust1'). Three options are possible: 'add' to add the additive bias effect,'mult' for multiplicative bias effect and 'both' includes both an additive and a multiplicative terms. bias.effect An optional character indicating the relationship for the bias coefficients across studies. Options are 'random' or 'common' (default). It is required when method.bias='adjust1' or 'adjust2'. down.wgt An optional numeric indicating the percent to which studies at high risk of bias will be downweighed on average. The value ranges between 0 and 1. It can be provided when method.bias='adjust1' or 'adjust2'. prior An optional list to control the prior for various parameters in JAGS model. When effects are set as 'random', we can set the heterogeneity parameters for: tau.trt for the treatment effects, tau.reg0 for the effect of prognostic covariates, tau.regb and tau.regw for within- and between-study covariate effect, respectively. and tau.gamma for bias effect. The default of all heterogeneity parameters is 'dunif(0,2)'. Currently only the uniform distribution is supported. When the method.bias= 'adjust1' or 'adjust2', the user may provide priors to control the bias probability. For the bias probabilities, beta distributions are assumed with the following default values: RCT with low (pi.low.rct='dbeta(1,10)'), high (pi.high.rct='dbeta(10,1)') bias, NRS with low (pi.low.rct='dbeta(1,30)') / high (pi.high.rct='dbeta(30,1)') bias (pi.low.nrs, pi.high.nrs). run.nrs An optional list is needed when the NRS used as a prior (method.bias='prior'). The list consists of the following: (var.infl) controls the common inflation of the variance of NRS estimates (w) and its values range between 0 (NRS does not contribute at all and the prior is vague) and 1 (the NRS evidence is used at face value, default approach). The parameter (mean.shift) is the bias shift (\zeta) to be added/subtracted from the estimated mean treatment effects (on the log-scale) from NRS network (0 is the default). trt.effect is a character indicates how to combine treatment effects across NRS studies .Options are 'random' or 'common' (default). Here you can also specify the arguments to control the MCMC chains with default value is in the parentheses: the number of adaptions n.adapt (500), number of iterations n.iter(10000), number of burn in n.burnin (4000), number of thinning thin (1) and number of chains n.chains (2). jags.model from rjags package describes these arguments. quiet A logical passed on to jags.model.

### Details

This function creates a JAGS model and the needed data. The JAGS code is created from the internal function crossnma.code.

Covariates provided in arguments cov1, cov2 and cov3 can be either numeric or dichotomous (should be provided as factor or character) variables. By default, no covariate adjustment is applied (network meta-analysis).

### Value

An object of class crossnma.model containing information on the JAGS model, which is a list containing the following components:

 model A long character string containing JAGS code that will be run in jags.model. data The data to be used to run JAGS model. trt.key A table of the treatments and its mapped integer number (as used in JAGS model). study.key A table of the studies and its mapped integer number (as used in JAGS model). trt.effect A character defining the model for the study-specific treatment effects. method.bias A character for defining the method to combine randomized clinical trials (RCT) and non-randomized studies (NRS). covariate A vector of the the names of the covariates (cov1, cov2 and cov3) in prt.data and std.data used in network meta-regression. cov.ref A vector of values of cov1.ref, cov2.ref, cov3.ref to center continuous covariates. Dichotomous covariates take NA. dich.cov.labels A matrix with the levels of each dichotomous covariate and the corresponding assigned 0 / 1 values. split.regcoef A logical value. If FALSE the within- and between-study regression coefficients will be considered equal. regb.effect A character indicating the model for the between-study regression coefficients across studies. regw.effect A character indicating the model for the within-study regression coefficients across studies. bias.effect A character indicating the model for the bias coefficients across studies. bias.type A character indicating the effect of bias on the treatment effect; additive ('add') or multiplicative ('mult') or both ('both'). all.data.ad A data.frame object with the prt.data (after it is aggregated) and std.data in a single dataset. call Function call. version Version of R package crossnma used to create object.

### Author(s)

Tasnim Hamza tasnim.hamza@ispm.unibe.ch, Guido Schwarzer sc@imbi.uni-freiburg.de

crossnma, jags.model

### Examples

# We conduct a network meta-analysis assuming a random-effects
# model.
# The data comes from randomized-controlled trials and
# non-randomized studies (combined naively)

# Create a JAGS model
mod <- crossnma.model(treat, id, relapse, n, design,
prt.data = ipddata, std.data = stddata,
reference = "A", trt.effect = "random", method.bias = "naive")

# Fit JAGS model