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Pocock Boundary
The Pocock boundary is a method for determining whether to stop a clinical trial prematurely. The typical clinical trial compares two groups of patients. One group are given a placebo or conventional treatment, while the other group of patients are given the treatment that is being tested. The investigators running the clinical trial will wish to stop the trial early for ethical reasons if the treatment group clearly shows evidence of benefit. In other words, "when early results proved so promising it was no longer fair to keep patients on the older drugs for comparison, without giving them the opportunity to change." The concept was introduced by the medical statistician Stuart Pocock in 1977. The many reasons underlying when to stop a clinical trial for benefit were discussed in his editorial from 2005. Details The Pocock boundary gives a ''p''-value threshold for each interim analysis which guides the data monitoring committee on whether to stop the trial. The boundary used d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clinical Trial
Clinical trials are prospective biomedical or behavioral research studies on human participants designed to answer specific questions about biomedical or behavioral interventions, including new treatments (such as novel vaccines, drugs, dietary choices, dietary supplements, and medical devices) and known interventions that warrant further study and comparison. Clinical trials generate data on dosage, safety and efficacy. They are conducted only after they have received health authority/ethics committee approval in the country where approval of the therapy is sought. These authorities are responsible for vetting the risk/benefit ratio of the trial—their approval does not mean the therapy is 'safe' or effective, only that the trial may be conducted. Depending on product type and development stage, investigators initially enroll volunteers or patients into small pilot studies, and subsequently conduct progressively larger scale comparative studies. Clinical trials can vary i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Placebo
A placebo ( ) is a substance or treatment which is designed to have no therapeutic value. Common placebos include inert tablets (like sugar pills), inert injections (like Saline (medicine), saline), sham surgery, and other procedures. In general, placebos can affect how patients perceive their condition and encourage the body's chemical processes for relieving pain and a few other symptoms, but have no impact on the disease itself. Improvements that patients experience after being treated with a placebo can also be due to unrelated factors, such as regression to the mean (a statistical effect where an unusually high or low measurement is likely to be followed by a less extreme one). The use of placebos in clinical medicine raises ethical concerns, especially if they are disguised as an active treatment, as this introduces dishonesty into the doctor–patient relationship and bypasses informed consent. While it was once assumed that this deception was necessary for placebos to have ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stuart Pocock
Stuart J. Pocock is a British medical statistician. He has been professor of medical statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine since 1989. His research interests include statistical methods for the design, monitoring, analysis and reporting of randomized clinical trials. He also collaborates on major clinical trials, particularly in cardiovascular disease. In 2003, the Royal Statistical Society awarded him the Bradford Hill Medal "for his development of clinical trials methodology, including group sequential methods, his extensive applied work, notably in the epidemiology Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population. It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidenc ... and treatment of heart disease, and his exposition of good practice nationally and internationally, especially through his book ''Clinical T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
P-value
In null-hypothesis significance testing, the ''p''-value is the probability of obtaining test results at least as extreme as the result actually observed, under the assumption that the null hypothesis is correct. A very small ''p''-value means that such an extreme observed outcome would be very unlikely under the null hypothesis. Reporting ''p''-values of statistical tests is common practice in academic publications of many quantitative fields. Since the precise meaning of ''p''-value is hard to grasp, misuse is widespread and has been a major topic in metascience. Basic concepts In statistics, every conjecture concerning the unknown probability distribution of a collection of random variables representing the observed data X in some study is called a ''statistical hypothesis''. If we state one hypothesis only and the aim of the statistical test is to see whether this hypothesis is tenable, but not to investigate other specific hypotheses, then such a test is called a null ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haybittle–Peto Boundary
The Haybittle–Peto boundary is a rule for deciding when to stop a clinical trial prematurely. It is named for John Haybittle and Richard Peto. The typical clinical trial compares two groups of patients. One group are given a placebo or conventional treatment, while the other group of patients are given the treatment that is being tested. The investigators running the clinical trial will wish to stop the trial early for ethical reasons if the treatment group clearly shows evidence of benefit. In other words, "when early results proved so promising it was no longer fair to keep patients on the older drugs for comparison, without giving them the opportunity to change." The Haybittle–Peto boundary is one such stopping rule, and it states that if an interim analysis shows a probability of equal to, or less than 0.001 that a difference as extreme or more between the treatments is found, given that the null hypothesis is true, then the trial should be stopped early. The final analysi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sequential Experiments
In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is called the ''length'' of the sequence. Unlike a set, the same elements can appear multiple times at different positions in a sequence, and unlike a set, the order does matter. Formally, a sequence can be defined as a function from natural numbers (the positions of elements in the sequence) to the elements at each position. The notion of a sequence can be generalized to an indexed family, defined as a function from an ''arbitrary'' index set. For example, (M, A, R, Y) is a sequence of letters with the letter 'M' first and 'Y' last. This sequence differs from (A, R, M, Y). Also, the sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8), which contains the number 1 at two different positions, is a valid sequence. Sequences can be ''finite'', as in these examples, or ''infini ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clinical Research
Clinical research is a branch of healthcare science that determines the safety and effectiveness ( efficacy) of medications, devices, diagnostic products and treatment regimens intended for human use. These may be used for prevention, treatment, diagnosis or for relieving symptoms of a disease. Clinical research is different from clinical practice. In clinical practice established treatments are used, while in clinical research evidence is collected to establish a treatment. Overview The term "clinical research" refers to the entire bibliography of a drug/device/biologic, in fact any test article from its inception in the lab to its introduction to the consumer market and beyond. Once the promising candidate or the molecule is identified in the lab, it is subjected to pre-clinical studies or animal studies where different aspects of the test article (including its safety toxicity if applicable and efficacy, if possible at this early stage) are studied. In the United States ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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