Researchers, writing online this month in the Annals of Internal Medicine, pooled data from 20 randomized controlled trials that compared a course of probiotics with a placebo or no treatment on the incidence of C. difficile-associated diarrhea.
In this context, Roa et al. [22] reported a prospective phase III trial comparing an abbreviated course (hypofractionated) with conventional radiotherapy in older patients with GBM.
Equally important, a shorter 2-week course of 30 mg prednisolone carries little additional risk if taken immediately before the date of interest, compared with a course of the same duration that is discontinued 1 month earlier.
Based on these and other experimental data, the ongoing ECOG trial E4697 is comparing a 1-year course of GM-CSF, with or without melanoma-antigen peptide vaccination, to placebo in patients with high-risk node positive, recurrent, and completely resected metastatic melanoma.
One RCT compared a short course of proton pump inhibitors with vasoconstrictor therapies after haemostasis in acute variceal bleeding.
The lack of increased effect by the addition of the OPSMC in this group of healthy, asymptomatic women is possibly due to differences in motivation between women undertaking a chronic disease self-management course who actually have a symptomatic condition, compared with a course aimed at preventing a chronic disease in healthy women.
The study is a two-arm randomized controlled trial comparing a web-based guided self-help course with care-as-usual.
The authors, who include Prof Williams, point out in the paper that the study had no control group, meaning there was nothing to compare the course with.
Compared, of course, with the industry's roller coaster ride through the 1970's and 1980's, the 1990's might seem more like swan boats.
There have been no randomized trials using 5-HT3 receptor antagonists that compared a five-day course of treatment with a more protracted course.
They compare it, of course, with Ulysses.
