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Mixed treatment comparison (MTC) is a generalization of meta‐analysis. Instead of the same treatment for a disease being tested in a number of studies, a number of different interventions are considered. Meta‐regression is also a generalization of meta‐analysis where an attempt is made to explain the heterogeneity between the treatment effects in the studies by regressing on study‐level covariables. Our focus is where there are several different treatments considered in a number of randomized controlled trials in a specific disease, the same treatment can be applied in several arms within a study, and where differences in efficacy can be explained by differences in the study settings. We develop methods for simultaneously comparing several treatments and adjusting for study‐level covariables by combining ideas from MTC and meta‐regression.

We use a case study from rheumatoid arthritis. We identified …