Dear SDM team,

I would like to conduct a meta-regression to examine the effects of age on my meta-analysis, but I have encountered some problems:

1. the ages of patients and controls are both available, shall I just use the ages of patients?

2. three maps have been generated after the meta-regression analysis. According to the SDM tutorial, the age_1 map represents the differences between oldest patients and controls, the age_0 map represents the differences between youngest patients and controls, and the age_1m0 map represents the differences between oldest and youngest patients. However, I am still unclear how can I find the relationship between age and brain abnormalities (i.e., r value).

Best,
Yuanwei

Dear Yuanwei,

You can use the age of the patients, but I understand that the ages of the patients and the age of the controls should be very similar, and thus the analysis using the age of the patients and the analysis using the age of both the patients and the controls should yield nearly identical results.

Regarding the maps, the one showing the relationship between age and brain abnormalities is age_1m0

Hope this helps,

Joaquim

Dear Joaquim,

Thank you for the clear explanation. It really helps!

Best,
Yuanwei