Table 1.
Eligibility criteria.
Fig 1.
PRISMA flow-diagram of the search strategy and study selection process.
Table 2.
Summary characteristics of the included studies.
Table 3.
Summary appraisal of the included full-text studies.
Table 4.
Overall effect sizes organized by viral species.
Fig 2.
Odds of MD given evidence of CMV infection.
The 95% C.I. for the OR obtained in each study down the page is represented by the confidence interval across the page, and the exact values corresponding to the interval are presented on the RHS. The +0.5 values reflect the Anscombe-Haldane corrected data. The overall effects obtained by pooled REML and DL inverse-variance estimators respectively are indicated by the solid black diamonds at the bottommost part of the figure, with the respective Cochran’s Q and Higgin’s I2 heterogeneity statistics presented alongside.
Fig 3.
Sensitivity of the relationship between MD and CMV-infection to leave-one-out analyses.
The overall effect size(s) obtained by omitting any particular study is indicated in a descending (non-cumulative) manner, with the study omitted indicated on the y-axis by (¬), and the respective effect sizes (log(OR)) presented along with 95% C.I. on the RHS. The overall effect obtained prior to the omission of any study is indicated by the bottommost light grey diamond. A: Sensitivity analysis (DL). B: Sensitivity analysis (REML).
Fig 4.
Distribution of studies by power around the measured and null relationship between MD and CMV-infection.
In each plot, the white, orange, red, and grey-striped regions represent p>0.1, 0.05<p<0.1, 0.01<p<0.05 and p<0.01 respectively. The y-axes correspond to the standard error, variance, or the inverse of either, while the x-axes correspond to the logarithmically transformed effect size, in this case measured as an OR. The vertical black reference lines are centered on zero for the standard error and variance funnel plots, while they are centered on the estimate effect size for the inverse funnel-plots. The left-hand column pane presents the plots for the DL estimator, while the right-hand column pane presents the plots for the REML estimator.