Bayesian Meta-Analysis with brms

In our previous post, Examining Meta Analysis, we contrasted a frequentist version of a meta analysis conducted with R’s meta package with a Bayesian meta analysis done mostly in stan using therstan package as a front end. In this post, we repeat the analysis using the brms package, which also depends on stan but allows the user to formulate complex Bayesian models without writing any stan code.
Authors

Joseph Rickert

John Mount

Published

January 13, 2025

In our previous post, Examining Meta Analysis, we contrasted a frequentist version of a meta analysis conducted with R’s meta package with a Bayesian meta analysis done mostly in stan using the rstan package as a front end. We did this to hint at the difference between working within the restricted confines of a traditional frequentist framework and the amazing freedom to set up and solve complex probabilistic models using a modern Bayesian engine like stan. However, we fully acknowledge the cognitive burden of learning a completely new language and, at the same time, also learning Bayesian methods.

In this post, we will ease your anxiety by pointing to a middle way by using the well-established and powerful package brms^1 to formulate stan models.

Set Up

First, we set up our environment and read in the data on the effect of Amlodipine on angina patients which can be found in the `meta’ package.

Show the code 
library(tidyverse)
library(brms)
library(tidybayes)
library(ggdist)

nE is the number of subjects in the treatment arm for each Protocol, meanE is the sample treatment mean for each protocol, varE is the observed sample variance for each protocol, and nC, meanC, and varC are the corresponding statistics for the control arm.

Show the code 
angina <- read_csv(file = "Amlodipine.csv", col_types = c("c",rep(c("i","d","d"),2))) 

angina 
# A tibble: 8 × 7
  Protocol    nE meanE   varE    nC   meanC   varC
  <chr>    <dbl> <dbl>  <dbl> <dbl>   <dbl>  <dbl>
1 154         46 0.232 0.225     48 -0.0027 0.0007
2 156         30 0.281 0.144     26  0.027  0.114 
3 157         75 0.189 0.198     72  0.0443 0.497 
4 162         12 0.093 0.139     12  0.228  0.0488
5 163         32 0.162 0.0961    34  0.0056 0.0955
6 166         31 0.184 0.125     31  0.0943 0.173 
7 303         27 0.661 0.706     27 -0.0057 0.989 
8 306         46 0.137 0.121     47 -0.0057 0.129

Review The Model

As in the previous post, we will measure the effect of the amlodipine treatment by looking at the difference in the observed means from the two arms of the study. Our model can be expressed as :

\[\delta_i = \theta + \nu_i + \epsilon\]

where for each study, i, \(\delta_i\), the observed treatment effect, is the mean of the control arm subtracted from the mean of the treatment arm.

\[\theta_i = \theta_{Ei} - \theta_{Ci}\] We assume the distribution:

\[ \theta_i \sim N(\theta, \tau)\]

\(\nu_i\) is the group effect from each study

\[ \nu_i \sim N\left( \theta_i, \sqrt{\frac{\sigma_{Ei}^2}{n_{Ei}}+\frac{\sigma_{Ci}^2}{n_{Ci}}} \right)\]

and \(\epsilon_i\) is random noise:

\[\epsilon \sim N(0, \sigma)\].

The data include \(\hat\theta_E\) = meanE and \(\hat\sigma^2_E\) = varE and the corresponding parameters for the control arm.

With this, we have that \(\theta\) is distributed as:

\[ \delta_i \sim N\left(\theta +\theta_i \;,\; \sqrt{\frac{\sigma_E^2}{n_E} + \frac{\sigma_C^2}{n_C}} + \sigma\right)\]

brms Syntax

Although it is much simpler than using stan directly, brms is not without its own cognitive load. Using any complex package correctly and with confidence requires time and effort to understand how things work. At a minimum, it is necessary to fully comprehend the function signature and all of the options implicitly coded therein.

A good bit of the cognitive load associated with brms is associated with the formula interface, which it adopts form the lme4 package for formulating and solving frequentist mixed-effects models. brms builds on this syntax to allow formulating expressions to set up complex, multilevel models.

The general formula argument^2 is structured as response | aterms ~ pterms + (gterms | group). Everything on the right side of ∼ specifies predictors. + is used to separate different effects from each other. Note: the formula syntax is a very compressed notation, so even though it is in itself concise, explanations of it tend to be long. We very much recommend reading the package documentation.

aterms

The aterms are optional terms that provide special information about the response variable. Especially helpful for meta-analysis, the term se specifies the standard errors of the response variable when response is a treatment effect. The pdf states:

Suppose that the variable yi contains the effect sizes from the studies and sei the corresponding standard errors. Then, fixed and random effects meta-analyses can be conducted using the formulas yi | se(sei) ~ 1 and yi | se(sei) ~ 1 + (1 | study), respectively, where study is a variable uniquely identifying every study. … By default, the standard errors replace the parameter sigma. To model sigma in addition to the known standard errors, set argument sigma in function se to TRUE, for instance, yi | se(sei, sigma = TRUE) ~ 1.

pterms

pterms are population-level terms. Everything on the right side of formula that is not recognized as part of a group-level term is treated as a population-level effect.

gterms

gterms are group-level terms that are specified as (coefs | group) where coefs contains one or more variables whose effects are assumed to vary with the levels of the grouping factor. For example, if both a group intercept and subject age vary by group, the group effects would be specified by (1 + age | group). Note that it is possible to specify multiple grouping factors, each with multiple group-level coefficients.

Set up the model using the brms package

First, we read in the data using dplyr , add delta_i the difference in means and its standard error, se_di, rename Protocol to study for convenience, and drop the variables we no longer need. Note: we will refer to Protocol as study from now on.

Show the code 
df <- angina %>% mutate(delta_i = (meanE - meanC), se_di = sqrt(varE/nE + varC/nC)) %>%
                rename(study = Protocol) %>%
                select(study, delta_i, se_di, nE,nC)
                        
head(df)
# A tibble: 6 × 5
  study delta_i  se_di    nE    nC
  <chr>   <dbl>  <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
1 154    0.234  0.0701    46    48
2 156    0.254  0.0958    30    26
3 157    0.145  0.0977    75    72
4 162   -0.135  0.125     12    12
5 163    0.157  0.0762    32    34
6 166    0.0894 0.0980    31    31

Fit the model

Note that we are using the aterm se to inform the brm() function about varE and varC. The sigma = TRUE flag indicates that the residual standard deviation parameter sigma should be included in addition to the known measurement error. See the epsilon term in the model equations above. prior is an alias for the set_prior() function^2.

The last two lines in the call to brm() specify that the model is to be fitted using 4 chains, each with 2000 iterations of which the first 1000 are warm up to calibrate the sampler. This provides a total of 4000 posterior samples.

Show the code 
## Random effects meta-analysis

fit_brms <- brm(
  # specify random standard error effect size by group. See p43 of pdf 
  # sigma = TRUS means estimate epsilon variation in addition to using standard error estimates from data
  delta_i | se(se_di, sigma = TRUE) ~ 1 + (1 | study),
  data = df, 
  # set priors in stan language
  prior = c(prior(normal(0, 1), class = Intercept), 
           prior(normal(0, 1), class = sd, group = study)),
           iter = 2000, warmup = 1000, cores = 4, chains = 4, seed = 14,
           control = list(adapt_delta = 0.95))

# Save an object to a file
saveRDS(fit_brms, file = "fit_brms.rds")

The model fit function shows the great advantage brms achieves by combining lme4s concise formula notation with the exact solutions provided by stan. Working directly in stan does provide great freedom, but freedom comes at the cost of easily specifying models that might not make sense. The brms notation helps guide users in specifying meaningful models.

Note that in most cases, it is not necessary to specify Normal or t-distribution priors. The software will get it right. We included the prior statement to show how it works. Also note that in order to save processing time when running on the blog site, we read in the model fit object from the RDS file which we wrote above.

Here are the results of the model fit.

Show the code 
# Restore the object
fit_brms <- readRDS(file = "fit_brms.rds")
summary(fit_brms)
 Family: gaussian 
  Links: mu = identity; sigma = identity 
Formula: delta_i | se(se_di, sigma = TRUE) ~ 1 + (1 | study) 
   Data: df (Number of observations: 8) 
  Draws: 4 chains, each with iter = 2000; warmup = 1000; thin = 1;
         total post-warmup draws = 4000

Multilevel Hyperparameters:
~study (Number of levels: 8) 
              Estimate Est.Error l-95% CI u-95% CI Rhat Bulk_ESS Tail_ESS
sd(Intercept)     0.10      0.09     0.00     0.33 1.00     1505     2108

Regression Coefficients:
          Estimate Est.Error l-95% CI u-95% CI Rhat Bulk_ESS Tail_ESS
Intercept     0.16      0.08     0.01     0.34 1.00     2033     1610

Further Distributional Parameters:
      Estimate Est.Error l-95% CI u-95% CI Rhat Bulk_ESS Tail_ESS
sigma     0.10      0.09     0.00     0.33 1.00     2129     1798

Draws were sampled using sampling(NUTS). For each parameter, Bulk_ESS
and Tail_ESS are effective sample size measures, and Rhat is the potential
scale reduction factor on split chains (at convergence, Rhat = 1).

The first section of the summary gives some basic information about the model specification. Following this are the statistics for each of the estimated parameters. We see that they are in substantial agreement with the results obtained in our previous post, even though some of the details of the model specification are slightly different than the previous model fits. The payoff is the Intercept, whose value is 0.16.

For each estimated parameter Estimate and Est.Error provide the mean and the standard deviation of the posterior distribution. l-95% CI and u-95% CI provide the lower and upper bounds on the 95% credible intervals. Rhat = 1 for each parameter indicates that the Markov chains have converged. An Rhat considerably greater than 1 (i.e., > 1.1) would mean that the chains have not yet converged, and it would be necessary to run more iterations or perhaps set stronger priors. (See Gelman and Rubin) Bulk_ESS and Tail_ESS are diagnostics for the sampling efficiency in the bulk and tail of the posterior distribution, respectively. See the stan documentation for details and interpretation.

The brms package also provides a plot method that provides posterior density plots and trace plots of the MCMC draws for the estimated statistics. Note that b_Intercept is the internal stan name for the population intercept.

Show the code 
plot(fit_brms)

Plots for analysis

Now we will prepare a Bayesian version of a forest plot with the help of the spread_draws() function in the tidybayes package that collects information from the fit_brms object and returns it as columns in a data frame. This first code block creates two data frames out_indiv adds the population to the study specific intercept for each draw, while out_theta sets up the data to compute the mean value of population intercept. These data frames are combined into out_all, which is ready for plotting. The mean_qi() function from tidybayes translates draws from distributions in the grouped data frame into point and interval summaries.

Show the code 
# Prepare data frame for plotting
out_indiv <- spread_draws(fit_brms, r_study[study,term], b_Intercept) %>%
             mutate(Intercept = r_study + b_Intercept) %>%
             mutate(study = as.character(study)) %>%
             select(study,term,Intercept)
 
out_theta <- spread_draws(fit_brms, r_study[study,term], b_Intercept) %>%
           mutate(study = "theta") %>%
           mutate(Intercept = b_Intercept) %>%
           select(study,term,Intercept)

out_all <- bind_rows(out_indiv, out_theta) %>% mutate(study = factor(study)) %>% 
  ungroup() %>%
  mutate(study = str_replace_all(study, "\\.", " "))

# Data frame of summary numbers
out_all_sum <- group_by(out_all, study) %>%  mean_qi(Intercept)

This code stacks and plots the graphs.

Show the code 
# Draw plot
out_all %>%   
  ggplot(aes(Intercept,study)) + 
  # Zero!
  geom_vline(xintercept = 0, linewidth = .25, lty = 2) +
  stat_halfeye(.width = c(.8, .95), fill = "dodgerblue") +
  # Add text labels
  geom_text(
    data = mutate_if(out_all_sum, is.numeric, round, 2),
    aes(label = str_glue("{Intercept} [{.lower}, {.upper}]"), x = 0.75),
    hjust = "inward"
  ) +
  # Observed as empty points
  geom_point(
    data = df %>% mutate(study = str_replace_all(study, "\\.", " ")), 
    aes(x=delta_i), position = position_nudge(y = -.2), shape = 1 
  )

Stan Code

Finally, we extract the stan code from the fit_brms object. This is an extremely useful feature for checking the model, checking that your brms code is doing what you think it is, and maybe for learning stan.

Show the code 
stancode(fit_brms)
“stan code”
Show the code 
stancode(fit_brms)
// generated with brms 2.21.0
functions {
}
data {
  int<lower=1> N;  // total number of observations
  vector[N] Y;  // response variable
  vector<lower=0>[N] se;  // known sampling error
  // data for group-level effects of ID 1
  int<lower=1> N_1;  // number of grouping levels
  int<lower=1> M_1;  // number of coefficients per level
  array[N] int<lower=1> J_1;  // grouping indicator per observation
  // group-level predictor values
  vector[N] Z_1_1;
  int prior_only;  // should the likelihood be ignored?
}
transformed data {
  vector<lower=0>[N] se2 = square(se);
}
parameters {
  real Intercept;  // temporary intercept for centered predictors
  real<lower=0> sigma;  // dispersion parameter
  vector<lower=0>[M_1] sd_1;  // group-level standard deviations
  array[M_1] vector[N_1] z_1;  // standardized group-level effects
}
transformed parameters {
  vector[N_1] r_1_1;  // actual group-level effects
  real lprior = 0;  // prior contributions to the log posterior
  r_1_1 = (sd_1[1] * (z_1[1]));
  lprior += normal_lpdf(Intercept | 0, 1);
  lprior += student_t_lpdf(sigma | 3, 0, 2.5)
    - 1 * student_t_lccdf(0 | 3, 0, 2.5);
  lprior += normal_lpdf(sd_1 | 0, 1)
    - 1 * normal_lccdf(0 | 0, 1);
}
model {
  // likelihood including constants
  if (!prior_only) {
    // initialize linear predictor term
    vector[N] mu = rep_vector(0.0, N);
    mu += Intercept;
    for (n in 1:N) {
      // add more terms to the linear predictor
      mu[n] += r_1_1[J_1[n]] * Z_1_1[n];
    }
    target += normal_lpdf(Y | mu, sqrt(square(sigma) + se2));
  }
  // priors including constants
  target += lprior;
  target += std_normal_lpdf(z_1[1]);
}
generated quantities {
  // actual population-level intercept
  real b_Intercept = Intercept;
}

Conclusion and Observations

There are two “take aways” from this post that we would like to emphasize.

  1. brms makes it easy to specify Bayesian models that produce probability distributions that fully characterize estimated quantities. There is really no reason to settle for the frequentist point estimates that were the best that could be done before the availability of MCMC engines like stan.

  2. In Bayesian analysis, we use the structural assumption that unidentified population parameters generate individual outcomes that are used to create summaries of these individuals. This means knowing the individuals (or, in our case, sufficient statistics about the individuals) greatly influences our posterior estimates of plausible population parameters. With brms we are able to quickly infer the difference between treatment and control in a disciplined and documented fashion.

We would also like to point out that our simple example which is a typical meta-analysis project is a multi-level model built without having patient-level data. If we had the patient-level data from the Amplodipine study, then we might have considered a three-level nested model: subjects within treatment arms within studies. We avoided the first level by not having the data and the second level by directly modeling the difference between treatment arms.

  1. See Details under brmsformula in the brms package PDF.

  2. See Details under set_prior on page 211 of the package PDF.