Table 1.
List of search terms used in developing search strategies.
Table 2.
Eligibility criteria upon which studies were chosen for the systematic review.
Fig 1.
Flow diagram indicating the breakdown of the literature search results.
This flow chart of the selection process was prepared following the template provided by Liberati et al., 2009 [31].
Table 3.
Reported experimental half-lives compared as % increase and absolute mean differences.
Fig 2.
The effect size of conjugation represented as absolute mean differences of plasma half-life between conjugated and control (unconjugated) peptides.
Table 4.
Meta-statistics calculated for the studies included in the meta-analysis.
Fig 3.
Forest plots detailing summary statistics from (A) all the meta-analysed peptides and (B) peptides that use fatty acids as conjugates. The squares indicate the point estimate of the weighted effect size (WES) of individual studies. The size of the square is indicative of the weight assigned to the study. The diamond at the bottom indicates the combined effect size and 95% confidence intervals. A vertical line through the vertices of the diamond reads the point estimate of the combined effect whereas a horizontal line through the vertices indicates the 95% confidence interval. Forest Plot A indicates very high heterogeneity (I2 = 99.9%) and is not statistically significant (p = 0.18). Forest Plot B indicates high heterogeneity (I2 = 88.3%) but is statistically significant (p = 0.002). SD = standard deviation, WES = weighted mean difference.
Fig 4.
Sensitivity analysis for the influence of individual studies on the combined effect.
The central thick line indicates the overall effect as seen in Fig 3. The two vertical lines on either side indicates its 95% CI. Each diamond indicates the combined effect observed when the study on the left is omitted. The crosses on either side represent its respective 95% CI.
Fig 5.
Risk of bias analysis conducted for the included studies.
SYRCLE’s Risk of Bias (RoB) domains were used to assess risk of bias in the studied included in the SRMA. The modifications made to this template are noted in the materials section. The breakdown of RoB analysis for each individual study is provided in S3 Table.