Chapter 1: Clinical Trials of Pain Treatment: Single Dose Trials: Question 3.2


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Chapter 1: Clinical Trials of Pain Treatment: Single Dose Trials: Question 3.2

Is it difficult to conclude Drug X’s efficacy?

You answered:

The omission of the morphine positive control makes it hard to conclude that Drug X has any analgesic efficacy.

Treatments were placebo and drug X. The figure shows that Drug X gave a large amount of relief and was statistically superior to placebo.

Treatments were placebo, Drug X, and morphine. The figure shows that both Drug X and Morphine gave a large amount of relief, similar to each other. Both were statistically superior to placebo.

INCORRECT

One could still conclude from the data in the left-hand panel that Drug X is an effective analgesic. In the prior case, however (right-hand panel), we could conclude that the doses of Drug X and morphine used were somewhat similar in effect. Here, without that yardstick we cannot draw any conclusions about the relative efficacy of Drug X, as many factors can affect the absolute pain relief values in a study.

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