Plain Language Summaries
British Journal of Dermatology · 2014
Psoriasis is a common skin disease affecting about 2% of the population.In about 90% of cases it requires long-term treatment.For this reason, treatments which have been proved safe and efficient during long-term trials are required.Such treatments for patients with severe psoriasis include biologics (biological drugsso named because they mimic normal human molecules).There are several different types of biologics and this study demonstrates that while these treatments have individually been shown to be effective and safe, it is difficult to make direct comparisons between the different versions.This is because there is variance in the way the clinical trials (a type of research using real patients) are designed and how the data is analyzed in different studies.The range of variables outlined includes missing data, caused when patients taking part in the trial drop out, stop using the drug or miss assessments, which can bias results.There are four standard strategies for addressing the problem of missing data, and the authors, from Canada and Germany, show how results from a real clinical study changed when the different methods were used.The authors then evaluated the results of existing clinical trials, taking into account the different choices for designing clinical trials and analyzing the data, to determine how these choices may influence how the overall outcomes should be interpreted.They conclude that in the absence of common standards for long-term trials, doctors need to understand the differences in handling data so that they can better compare different therapies, in order to make the best choices for patients.Narrowband ultraviolet B (NBUVB) phototherapy in children with moderate to severe eczemaa comparative cohort study S.