The last line of Acknowledgements discloses that Oleg Epstein is a founder of OOO NPF 'Materia Medica Holding'. Not exactly the same as CEO but a clear COI is disclosed. Multiple other authors relations to the company disclosed. Study funded by the company and statistical analysis provided by the company.
The temperature is reported as percentages with fever each morning, percentages with fever each evening, mean body temp on day 1, on day 3 and day 7. Most of that did not make the abstract but the abstract states "the mean duration of fever in the Ergoferon and oseltamivir groups was 2.1 +- 1.5 days and 2.3 +- 1.6 days, respectively (p = 0.01)" Not only is this highly selective reporting of an outcome if one were truly interested in the duration of fever comparing medians would be more appropriate than means unless you found a normal distribution.
It states "The study was based on a non-inferiority design" but there is no mention of the margins or thresholds for defining non-inferiority. One table has a footnote stating "The t-test was calculated for differences between means to determine their significance as compared to the pre-defined delta (margin)." but I did not find any other mention of what this pre-defined delta or margin was.
It is published Open Access for the article, but in an Elsevier journal, not a journal considered predatory publishing.
Brian S. Alper, MD, MSPH, FAAFP
Founder of DynaMed
Vice President of Innovations and EBM Development, EBSCO Health
Mission: Provide the most useful information for healthcare decision-making
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-----Original Message-----
From: Evidence based health (EBH) [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Vasiliy Vlassov
Sent: Tuesday, December 20, 2016 3:19 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Int J Infect Dis
Published an article with description of the trial comparing the Russian drug to Tamiflu. Efficacy is "similar" (actually, no statistically significant difference found). If one believe that the Tamiflu works, one may believe that Ergoferone works. I know some of the authors, and know that they know that absence of the statistically significant difference is not a proof of 'similarity'. More, I know that they know that Tamiflu is NOT effective drug.
Authors presented the study as a proof of the efficacy of their drug. It is a homeopathic drug Ergoferon. The drug is just masqueraded as a medical drug. And it is big seller drug in Russia and nearby today.
The last point is that the last author Oleg Epstein gave his academic affiliation, but did not acknowledge that he is CEO of the company producing this drug.
I did not find the way to send the letter to the Editor...
Yours
VVV
--
Vasiliy V. Vlassov, MD
Professor, National Research University Higher School of Economics
e-mail: vlassov[a t]cochrane.ru
snail mail: P.O.Box 13 Moscow 109451 Russia Phone Russia +7(965)2511021
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