Tips for understanding Non-inferiority Trials

Format: Websites

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Language/s: English

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Resource Link: Visit the Website

Target Audience: Journalists and science writers

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Short Description:

A non-inferiority experiment endeavours to show that a new intervention is ‘not unacceptably worse’ than the comparison intervention.

Key Concepts addressed:

• 3-1 Do the outcomes measured matter to you?

Details

“Trials to show superiority generally penalize the sloppy investigator (although not always; improper handling of missing data can benefit a more toxic, less efficacious treatment, potentially increasing the possibility of a false finding in a superiority trial). By contrast, non-inferiority trials tend to reward the careless. The less rigorously conducted the trial, the easier it can be to show non-inferiority.” From an article in the journal, Trials, entitled, “Through the looking glass: understanding non-inferiority.”