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Relative risk reduction: Misinformative measure in clinical trials and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy
Treatment and vaccine efficacy in clinical trials are often reported in the media and medical journals as the relative risk reduction. The present article explains why the relative risk reduction is a misinformative measure that promotes disinformation when reporting efficacy in clinical research st...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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The Author. Published by Elsevier Inc.
2022
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9647013/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36785641 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dialog.2022.100074 |
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author | Brown, Ronald B. |
author_facet | Brown, Ronald B. |
author_sort | Brown, Ronald B. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Treatment and vaccine efficacy in clinical trials are often reported in the media and medical journals as the relative risk reduction. The present article explains why the relative risk reduction is a misinformative measure that promotes disinformation when reporting efficacy in clinical research studies such as randomized controlled trials for COVID-19 vaccines. The relative risk reduction is based on the relative risk, a proportional measure or ratio used in epidemiologic studies to estimate the probability of a disease associated with an exposure. The present article demonstrates how the relative risk reduction and relative risk obscure the magnitude of disease risk reduction in clinical research. The absolute risk reduction is shown to be a more precise and reliable measure of treatment and vaccine efficacy in clinical research studies. The absolute risk reduction reciprocal also measures the number needed to treat or vaccinate, and is a more accurate measure than the relative risk reduction for comparing risk reductions of clinical studies. Additionally, the present article reviews consequences of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy misinformation disseminated through media reports. The article concludes that relative risk reduction should not be used to measure treatment and vaccine efficacy in clinical trials. WHAT IS NEW? • Unreliability of relative measures in clinical trials is graphically illustrated, demonstrating constant relative measures as absolute measures change. • Misuse of relative measures in clinical research is historically linked to misinterpretation of Jerome Cornfield’s advice on measuring causative and associative effects. • Consequences of disinformation and misinformation related to COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and modern clinical medicine are described. • The proper use of absolute measures in meta-analyses is explained. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9647013 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | The Author. Published by Elsevier Inc. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-96470132022-11-14 Relative risk reduction: Misinformative measure in clinical trials and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy Brown, Ronald B. Dialogues Health Article Treatment and vaccine efficacy in clinical trials are often reported in the media and medical journals as the relative risk reduction. The present article explains why the relative risk reduction is a misinformative measure that promotes disinformation when reporting efficacy in clinical research studies such as randomized controlled trials for COVID-19 vaccines. The relative risk reduction is based on the relative risk, a proportional measure or ratio used in epidemiologic studies to estimate the probability of a disease associated with an exposure. The present article demonstrates how the relative risk reduction and relative risk obscure the magnitude of disease risk reduction in clinical research. The absolute risk reduction is shown to be a more precise and reliable measure of treatment and vaccine efficacy in clinical research studies. The absolute risk reduction reciprocal also measures the number needed to treat or vaccinate, and is a more accurate measure than the relative risk reduction for comparing risk reductions of clinical studies. Additionally, the present article reviews consequences of COVID-19 vaccine efficacy misinformation disseminated through media reports. The article concludes that relative risk reduction should not be used to measure treatment and vaccine efficacy in clinical trials. WHAT IS NEW? • Unreliability of relative measures in clinical trials is graphically illustrated, demonstrating constant relative measures as absolute measures change. • Misuse of relative measures in clinical research is historically linked to misinterpretation of Jerome Cornfield’s advice on measuring causative and associative effects. • Consequences of disinformation and misinformation related to COVID-19 vaccine efficacy and modern clinical medicine are described. • The proper use of absolute measures in meta-analyses is explained. The Author. Published by Elsevier Inc. 2022-12 2022-11-10 /pmc/articles/PMC9647013/ /pubmed/36785641 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dialog.2022.100074 Text en © 2022 The Author Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Brown, Ronald B. Relative risk reduction: Misinformative measure in clinical trials and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy |
title | Relative risk reduction: Misinformative measure in clinical trials and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy |
title_full | Relative risk reduction: Misinformative measure in clinical trials and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy |
title_fullStr | Relative risk reduction: Misinformative measure in clinical trials and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy |
title_full_unstemmed | Relative risk reduction: Misinformative measure in clinical trials and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy |
title_short | Relative risk reduction: Misinformative measure in clinical trials and COVID-19 vaccine efficacy |
title_sort | relative risk reduction: misinformative measure in clinical trials and covid-19 vaccine efficacy |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9647013/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36785641 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.dialog.2022.100074 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT brownronaldb relativeriskreductionmisinformativemeasureinclinicaltrialsandcovid19vaccineefficacy |