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Can evidence from studies in adults improve our understanding of treatment effects in children?

Posted on 14 April 2025

CRD Research Fellow Ruth Walker presented her poster "Can adult evidence improve our understanding of treatment effect in children?" at the 2025 Children and Young People's Cancer Association (CCLG) conference in Birmingham.

Ruth's work explored whether including adult evidence in evidence syntheses of child data can improve the precision of treatment effect estimates in children (a population where data can be lacking). Her work demonstrates that there can be meaningful differences in treatment effect between child and adult populations, which when accounted for, can introduce additional heterogeneity, producing treatment effects estimates in children that are less precise.

The findings highlight that adult evidence should not be simply assumed to be generalisable to children, and methods of synthesising child and adult data within supportive care in cancer should account for any differences in treatment effect that may be present. 

Ruth's research is part of her doctoral fellowship, funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR).

CCLG-poster-2025 (PDF , 130kb)