Length of first remission was a strong predictor of survival for leukaemia with a 46% reduced risk of death for every additional year of event-free survival.
For the primary outcome measures, the proportion of patients in remission in the experimental and control groups will be compared using a Pearson chi-square statistic and the mean length of remission with a t-test or Wilcoxon test for independent samples, based on the distribution of the independent variable.
This assumption is dubious, as we suppose that there can be a difference in the length of the remission period in two patients achieving their first remission in two different times (e.g. after 3 and 18 months from the start of imatinib therapy) as we can anticipate different characteristics of the disease and thus also a different disease behaviour [ 4, 24].
Even among patients with metastatic PCa, for which AST is the established standard of care, the length of clinical remission induced by AST can range from months to more than 10 years [ 4].
In ALL our findings suggest that neither genetic susceptibility nor an environmental factor, effective during the early antenatal period, is of aetiological importance; but the response to treatment, assessed as length of first remission, was found to be related to the amount of fingertip pattern.
The primary outcome measure is remission status measured both as the proportion of patients in complete remission and the mean length of remission achieved following randomization during the additional three years of follow up.
Table 2 summarizes the number of salvage attempts resulting in CR by whether or not a previous remission was achieved and the length of the previous remission at the specified salvage treatment attempt.
The primary outcome is complete remission measured as both the proportion of patients in remission, as well as the mean length of remission achieved following randomization during the additional three years of follow up.
However, the LI and MI were significantly higher (p less than 0.01) in the group of 10 children of 54 studied with ALL whose blasts formed spontaneous rosettes with sheep red blood cells at 37 degrees C. The initial LI and MI were not shown to be related to the likelihood of attaining a complete response or to the length of remission in either ALL or AML.
I would not quibble; one would invite studies of the length of remission of cases with clear-cut indomethacin effects to see what is a reasonable interval.
