Transferrin receptor-targeted delivery in preclinical Alzheimer's disease models: data extraction dataset and analysis script for a systematic review and meta-analysis

This deposit contains the data extraction dataset and analysis script for the article "Transferrin receptor-targeted delivery in preclinical Alzheimer's disease models: a systematic review and meta-analysis". Nine studies were included; eight contributed to pooled analyses of brain uptake, amyloid-beta plaque burden and Morris water maze escape latency. extraction_dataset.csv is the full data extraction dataset. It holds one row per study per outcome per analysis configuration, with the group means, standard deviations and sample sizes for the targeted and comparator arms, the figure or table from which each value was taken, the direction of benefit for the outcome, and notes recording any unit conversion or back-calculation applied analysis.R is the analysis script. It runs from extraction_dataset.csv without modification and reproduces every pooled estimate, leave-one-out analysis and sensitivity analysis reported in the article and its supplementary material, on both the standardised mean difference (Hedges' g) and ratio-of-means scales. Pooled estimates come from random-effects models fitted by restricted maximum likelihood with the Hartung-Knapp adjustment. The script also refits every pooled outcome with the DerSimonian-Laird estimator, for the comparison reported in the supplementary material, and draws the three forest plots that make up Figure 2 of the article. It ends with a call to sessionInfo() recording the software environment in which the reported results were produced. To reproduce: R 4.6.1 or later with the metafor package (version 5.2-1). Place both files in the same directory, set the working directory to it, and run analysis.R. Results print to the console and Figure2.png is written to the working directory.