reading SURMOUNT threads from 2024 and half of it aged badly
reading SURMOUNT threads from 2024 and half of it aged badly. Making the case below, and I expect to lose some of it in the comments. Quoted a figure here confidently, got asked whether it was ITT, went and checked, and it was not. Learned something. Spent an evening with the appendix tables and found the subgroup…
How to read one of these papers in fifteen minutes, in the order that actually helps.
Start with the registered protocol and check the primary endpoint against what is reported. Then the methods: who was included, what the comparator was, how long the randomised phase ran. Then the discontinuation numbers, which are a tolerability result and are usually in a supplementary table.
Only then the efficacy figure, and read the interval rather than the point estimate. Finish with the limitations section, which is where the authors say what they actually think.
Fifteen minutes, and you will know more than any thread summarising it.
Not convinced. Cross-trial comparison between two programmes with different populations and designs is not a comparison.
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Agreed on comparators. "Superior" means nothing until you know superior to what and at what dose.
open-label extensions are not the same evidence as the randomised phase
The registered protocol is public. Comparing the registered primary endpoint with the reported one is a two-minute check and it is how outcome switching gets caught.
Started keeping the trial identifiers straight in a note file because I kept mixing up two programmes in the same sentence.
The press release said that; the publication says something more hedged. Worth reading both.