Forest plot for meta-analysis or sub-group analysis

FORESTPLOT generates a forest plot to demonstrate the effects of a predictor in multiple subgroups or across multiple studies. A forest plot is a graphical display designed to illustrate the relative strength of treatment effects in multiple quantitative scientific studies addressing the same question.

forestplot(response, predictor, subgroup, 'ArgumentName',ArgumentValue)
response - a Nx1 binary vector, where N is the number patients, "1" means an event/disease happened on this patient, "0" means the opposite and "NaN" means unknown. When response is a NxM matrix, each column is associated with one study. Pad with "NaN" in the end if the patient sizes are different across studies.
preditor - a Nx1 binary vector, where "1" means this patient is exposed to this treament or is within desire predictor range (e.g. low dose), "0" mean the opposite and "NaN" means unknown. When response is a NxM matrix, each column is associated with one study.Pad with "NaN" if the patient sizes are different across studies.
subgroup - a NxM binary vector, where "1" means this patient belongs to this subgroup "0" mean the opposite and "NaN" means unknown.

Optional 'ArgumentName' includes:
subgroup_text - a 1xM cell vector of strings, where each strings is a description of one subgroup/study. For example, {'Group 1', 'Group 2', 'Group 3'} or {'Study 1', 'Study 2', 'Study 3'}
predictor_text - a 1x2 cell vector of strings, where the first string is the description of the non-treatment group and the second is for the treatment group. For example, {'Favor high dose', 'Favor low dose'}
limx - a 1x2 vector to specify the limits of x coordinate. The plot is in logarithm scale.
'stat' - the statistics (odds ratio or relative risk) used to generate the forest plot. (options = 'or', 'rr', default = 'or')

For example,
response=round(rand(100, 1));
preditor=round(rand(100, 1));
subgroup=round(rand(100, 3));
forestplot(response, preditor, subgroup, 'stat', 'rr');
plots a forest plot.

Developed under Matlab version 7.10.0.499 (R2010a)
Created by Qi An
anqi2000@gmail.com