The therapeutic use of testosterone had a setback recently when a major trial had to be stopped early because of side effects [ 44].
The news that probiotic drinks don't really do anything for you – a review of seven major trials has found "no convincing evidence" that they have any effect at all on the gut bacteria of healthy people – is the kind of story that gladdens my heart a little.
Although improvements in overall survival (the gold standard outcome measure in oncology studies) have been seen in patient subpopulations in many phase III studies of bisphosphonates in breast cancer, only three major trials have been powered to assess overall survival as a primary efficacy endpoint.
For example, in patients with HER2-positive tumours, two major trials have shown that the addition of trastuzumab to neoadjuvant chemotherapy achieves a major increase in pCR rates [ 9, 10], results that accurately reflect the very significant disease-free survival and overall survival improvement achieved with the addition of trastuzumab to chemotherapy in adjuvant trials [ 11, 12].
Major clinical trial after major clinical trial has failed to identify novel therapeutic approaches that can be used in daily clinical practice as add-on to renin-angiotensin system blockade to improve outcomes [ 10].
It is the first time a major criminal trial has been heard without a jury in a British court in more than 400 years.
The ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, the highest military appeals court, was a significant victory for Major Hasan, whose trial has been delayed while his lawyers appealed the judge's handling of the case and the order to have him shaved.
Weight Watchers demanded that Jenny Craig, a division of Nestlé, stop broadcasting a commercial, featuring the actress Valerie Bertinelli, which claimed that a major clinical trial had concluded that Jenny Craig clients, who eat packaged meals, lost about twice as much weight as clients of the "largest weight-loss program" — which would be Weight Watchers.
It is fair to say that every major clinical trial had to start with some piloting or a small scale investigation to assess the feasibility of conducting a larger scale study: critical care [ 5], diabetes management intervention trials [ 6], cardiovascular trials [ 7], primary healthcare [ 8], to mention a few.
