Dear Colleague,
Warm greetings from historic Bury St Edmunds in the east of England.
I picked up this news item from across the Atlantic on using Bayesian
methods in clinical trials especially in the area of cancer. According to
the Donald Berry, professor and chair of the Department of Biostatistics and
Applied Mathematics at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Centre
this approach offers a lot of promise and “Bayesian approach is better for
doctors, patients who participate in clinical trials and for patients who
are waiting for new treatments to become available”
“Doctors want to be able to design trials to look at multiple potential
treatment combinations and use biomarkers to determine who is responding to
what medication," says Berry. "At the end of the day, when they enrol the
last patient in the study they want to be able to treat that patient
optimally depending on the patient's disease characteristics. Using a
Bayesian approach, the trial design exploits the results as the trial is
ongoing and adapts based on these interim results. That kind of thing is an
anathema in the standard approach."
The biggest challenge according to the author is convincing the regulatory
bodies such as FDA and adds “For example, the FDA has approved the
Bristol-Myers Squibb drug Pravigard Pac for prevention of secondary cardiac
events based on data evaluated using the Bayesian approach”.
The press release is available on line @
http://www.mdanderson.org/departments/newsroom/print.cfm?displayPrint=1&id=F90987E4-8EBB-4E10-8ED282EC15DD38E9&method=displayFull&pn=00c8a30f-c468-11d4-80fb00508b603a14&PrintPage=1
As the URL is too long you may have to copy and paste in your browser.
I thought some of you might be interested in this issue.
Warm regards & very best wishes,
Badri
Dr.P.Badrinath MD, BS, M.Phil, MPH, PhD (Cantab), MFPH
Consultant in Public Health & Affiliated Clinical Lecturer,
Suffolk West PCT & University of Cambridge, UK
http://myprofile.cos.com/badrishanthi
Disclaimer: The above views are my own and not that of my employing
organisations.
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