Placebo-Controlled Trials and Active-Control Trials in the Evaluation of New Treatments. Part 1: Ethical and Scientific Issues

View larger version (8K): [in a new window]   Appendix Figure. Interpretation of equivalence margins in active-control trials. Hypothetical results of five studies are shown. The result of each study is shown on the y-axis as the difference between treatments (ES – ET), where E S represents the control and E T represents the test drug. A positive difference favors the standard drug. Error bars show hypothetical 95% CIs for these differences. Three possible noninferiority margins are shown (M0, M1, M2). For more explanation, see the Appendix.