Magd Zakaria
Ain Shams University, Egypt
Title: Limited value of relative risk reductions for assessing the benefits of disease-modifying therapies for multiple sclerosis
Biography
Biography: Magd Zakaria
Abstract
The relative risk reduction ( RRR) is the main statistical parameter used to express the different primary outcomes of the clinical drug trials. Physicians often assume that a drug with a higher RRR demonstrated in one trial is more effective than a drug with a lower RRR demonstrated in another trial, and may pass this idea on to younger physicians and to the patients. The use-of the RRR as a measure of drug efficacy can be misleading as it depends on the nature of the population studied. The value of the RRR depends on the placebo event rate : A low RRR can be clinically meaningful if the event rate in the placebo group is high, while a high RRR can be clinically less meaningful if the event rate in the placebo group is low. Direct head to head comparison trials are the only way to assess the relative efficacy of the different drugs. The aim of this presentation is to correct this misconception.