BACKGROUND Propensity score (PS) analyses are increasingly used in multiple sclerosis (MS) research, largely owing to the greater availability of large observational cohorts and registry databases. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the use and quality of reporting of PS methods in the recent MS literature. METHODS We searched the PubMed database for articles published between January 2013 and July 2019. We restricted the search to comparative effectiveness studies of two disease-modifying therapies. RESULTS Thirty-nine studies were included in the review, with most studies (62%) published within the past 3 years. All studies reported the list of covariates used for the PS model, but only 21% of studies mentioned how those covariates were selected. Most studies used PS matching (72%), followed by PS adjustment (18%), weighting (15%), and stratification (3%), with some overlap. Most studies using matching or weighting reported checking post-PS covariate imbalance (91%), although about 45% of these studies relied on p values from various statistical tests. Only 25% of studies using matching reported calculating robust standard errors for the PS analyses. CONCLUSIONS The quality of reporting of PS methods in the MS literature is sub-optimal in general, and in some cases, inappropriate methods are used.

中文翻译：

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多发性硬化症文献中倾向评分方法的使用和报告质量：综述

背景 倾向评分 (PS) 分析越来越多地用于多发性硬化症 (MS) 研究，这主要是由于大型观察队列和注册数据库的可用性更高。目的 评估最近 MS 文献中 PS 方法的使用和报告质量。方法 我们在 PubMed 数据库中搜索了 2013 年 1 月至 2019 年 7 月之间发表的文章。我们将搜索限制在两种疾病缓解疗法的比较有效性研究中。结果 39 项研究被纳入评价，大多数研究（62%）在过去 3 年内发表。所有研究都报告了用于 PS 模型的协变量列表，但只有 21% 的研究提到了如何选择这些协变量。大多数研究使用 PS 匹配 (72%)，其次是 PS 调整 (18%)、加权 (15%) 和分层 (3%)，有一些重叠。大多数使用匹配或加权的研究报告检查了 PS 后协变量不平衡 (91%)，尽管这些研究中约有 45% 依赖于来自各种统计测试的 p 值。只有 25% 的使用匹配的研究报告计算了 PS 分析的稳健标准误差。结论 MS 文献中 PS 方法的报告质量总体上是次优的，在某些情况下，使用了不适当的方法。