Sormani Maria Pia, Bruzzi Paolo
Biostatistics Unit, Department of Health Sciences (DISSAL), University of Genoa, Genova, Italy.
S.C. Epidemiologia Clinica, IRCCS AOU San Martino-IST, Genova, Italy.
Mult Scler. 2017 Feb;23(2):197-200. doi: 10.1177/1352458516645671. Epub 2016 Jul 11.
The size of a treatment effect in clinical trials can be expressed in relative or absolute terms. Commonly used relative treatment effect measures are relative risks, odds ratios, and hazard ratios, while absolute estimate of treatment effect are absolute differences and numbers needed to treat. When making indirect comparisons of treatment effects, which is common in multiple sclerosis (MS), having now many drugs tested in independent trials, we can have different figures if we use relative or absolute measures, and a frequently asked question by clinicians is which approach should be used. In this report, we will try to define these measures, to give numerical examples of their calculation and specify their meaning and their context of use.
临床试验中治疗效果的大小可以用相对或绝对的方式来表示。常用的相对治疗效果测量指标有相对风险、比值比和风险比，而治疗效果的绝对估计指标是绝对差值和需治疗人数。在进行治疗效果的间接比较时（这在多发性硬化症（MS）中很常见，目前有许多药物在独立试验中进行了测试），如果我们使用相对或绝对测量方法，可能会得到不同的数据，临床医生经常问的一个问题是应该使用哪种方法。在本报告中，我们将尝试定义这些测量指标，给出其计算的数值示例，并说明其含义和使用背景。
