Hello,
Thank you for this wonderful software. I am a clinician-researcher interested in understanding whether I can use Metaboanalyst to find differential features under two conditions in a cross-over clinical trial, but incorporating a covariate.
I have been able to do paired analysis, and I have been able to see how I could use a different input method to incorporate a covariate (but without paired analysis).
Is this a way to incorporate a covariate (or more than one) in a paired-sample study design in Metaboanalyst?
Sincerely,
Brian
Not sure if it will work for your data. Maybe you can try the linear models with three metadata factors
Set Pair as “blocking factor”.
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Thank you very much. I have tried this approach, and I am finding that 1, -1, 2, -2, etc. pairing approach is not recognized as a valid blocking factor. The system assumes it’s a continuous variable, and changing it to categorical or removing the minus signs to form two-item groups doesn’t seem to work.
Perhaps it requires that I recode the pairing variable somehow in the metadata sheet.
Sincerely,
Brian
Yes, this is different from time-series. I suppose 4 columns in your metadata:
Sample IDs, Treatment, Subject IDs, Covariate
Pair information is essentially “Subject IDs”.
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