Meta-analysis topic ideas in neurology

Neurology covers conditions with very different evidence bases. Acute stroke has large, well-pooled trials, while rehabilitation, neurostimulation and rarer disorders are studied in small, varied trials that are hard to compare.

Gaps tend to sit where interventions are heterogeneous or outcomes are measured on different scales, so the work of a review is often in making studies comparable.

Find a neurology topic that has not been done

SynthGap searches the published literature, checks each candidate against existing systematic reviews, and proposes topics with the primary studies behind them. The free plan includes 3 discovery runs a month.

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Where gaps tend to hide in neurology

Rehabilitation and non-drug treatments

Physical, cognitive and speech therapy after stroke or brain injury come in many formats, with different doses and timing. Reviews exist but go out of date, and specific protocols are often not pooled.

Neurostimulation

Transcranial magnetic and direct-current stimulation trials differ in protocol and sham design, so specific indications and parameters can be open for a focused review.

Prevention and risk reduction

Secondary prevention of stroke, headache prevention and cognitive decline prevention each have many small trials.

Sex, age and other subgroups

Whether a treatment works differently by sex or age is often unanswered because trials do not report it in a comparable way.

Rare and paediatric neurological disorders

Small samples mean no single trial is conclusive, which is exactly when pooling is useful.

Outcomes and effect measures that pool well in neurology

Modified Rankin Scale after stroke: an ordinal scale. Trials report it as a shift across levels or dichotomised (for example 0 to 2). Pooling the dichotomised version as an odds ratio is common, but say which cut-off was used.
NIH Stroke Scale and similar scores: mean difference when all trials use the same scale.
Cognitive scores (for example MMSE or MoCA): standardised mean difference if scales differ, but interpret it against the minimal important difference.
Seizure freedom: risk ratio at a stated follow-up.
Migraine or headache days per month: mean difference, noting that placebo response is large.

Common traps in neurology reviews

Large placebo and sham responses in migraine, pain and stimulation trials. Make sure comparison arms are really comparable.
Dichotomising an ordinal scale loses information, and different trials choose different cut-offs.
Small trials with positive results are over-represented in published work. Check funnel asymmetry when you have enough studies.
Combining different stimulation protocols or therapy doses in one estimate without exploring whether dose changes the effect.

Check before you commit

Before committing months to a topic, check that nobody has beaten you to it. Search PubMed with its systematic review filter, the Cochrane Library, the PROSPERO register (for reviews that are registered but not yet published) and Epistemonikos. Look at how recent the latest review is and whether new trials have appeared since its search date. Step-by-step guide.

Starting points to try in SynthGap

These are areas to explore, not claims that they are open. Some may already be well covered, and finding that out quickly is the point.

Constraint-induced or task-oriented therapy for upper-limb recovery after stroke
Non-invasive brain stimulation for post-stroke aphasia
Exercise for cognitive function in people with mild cognitive impairment

Questions

Where do I look for neurology topics that have not been done?

Look at rehabilitation, neurostimulation protocols, specific subgroups and rare disorders rather than headline drug trials in acute stroke or migraine, which already have many reviews.

How do I pool studies that use different cognitive scales?

Use a standardised mean difference and interpret the size of the effect against what is clinically meaningful for each scale. State clearly that the result is on a standardised scale.

Is a review of small neurostimulation trials worthwhile?

It can be, if you restrict to one indication and one protocol family. Pooling very different protocols tends to hide real effects.

Other specialties

This page is general methodological guidance, not medical advice, and it does not list specific unreviewed topics. SynthGap's suggestions are AI-generated from the published literature, so verify them before registering a protocol.