The Library
Does the low prevalence affect the sample size of interventional clinical trials of rare diseases? An analysis of data from the aggregate analysis of clinicaltrials.gov
Tools
Hee, Siew Wan, Willis, Adrian, Tudur Smith, Catrin, Day, Simon, Miller, Frank, Madan, Jason, Posch, Martin, Zohar, Sarah and Stallard, Nigel (2017) Does the low prevalence affect the sample size of interventional clinical trials of rare diseases? An analysis of data from the aggregate analysis of clinicaltrials.gov. Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases, 12 (44). doi:10.1186/s13023-017-0597-1 ISSN 1750-1172.
|
PDF
WRAP-does-low-prevalence-sample-clinical-disease-Hee-2017.pdf - Published Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (2036Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13023-017-0597-1
Abstract
Background
Clinical trials are typically designed using the classical frequentist framework to constrain type I and II error rates. Sample sizes required in such designs typically range from hundreds to thousands of patients which can be challenging for rare diseases. It has been shown that rare disease trials have smaller sample sizes than non-rare disease trials. Indeed some orphan drugs were approved by the European Medicines Agency based on studies with as few as 12 patients. However, some studies supporting marketing authorisation included several hundred patients. In this work, we explore the relationship between disease prevalence and other factors and the size of interventional phase 2 and 3 rare disease trials conducted in the US and/or EU. We downloaded all clinical trials from Aggregate Analysis of ClinialTrials.gov (AACT) and identified rare disease trials by cross-referencing MeSH terms in AACT with the list from Orphadata. We examined the effects of prevalence and phase of study in a multiple linear regression model adjusting for other statistically significant trial characteristics.
Results
Of 186941 ClinicalTrials.gov trials only 1567 (0.8%) studied a single rare condition with prevalence information from Orphadata. There were 19 (1.2%) trials studying disease with prevalence <1/1,000,000, 126 (8.0%) trials with 1–9/1,000,000, 791 (50.5%) trials with 1–9/100,000 and 631 (40.3%) trials with 1–5/10,000. Of the 1567 trials, 1160 (74%) were phase 2 trials. The fitted mean sample size for the rarest disease (prevalence <1/1,000,000) in phase 2 trials was the lowest (mean, 15.7; 95% CI, 8.7–28.1) but were similar across all the other prevalence classes; mean, 26.2 (16.1–42.6), 33.8 (22.1–51.7) and 35.6 (23.3–54.3) for prevalence 1–9/1,000,000, 1–9/100,000 and 1–5/10,000, respectively. Fitted mean size of phase 3 trials of rarer diseases, <1/1,000,000 (19.2, 6.9–53.2) and 1–9/1,000,000 (33.1, 18.6–58.9), were similar to those in phase 2 but were statistically significant lower than the slightly less rare diseases, 1–9/100,000 (75.3, 48.2–117.6) and 1-5/10,000 (77.7, 49.6–121.8), trials.
Conclusions
We found that prevalence was associated with the size of phase 3 trials with trials of rarer diseases noticeably smaller than the less rare diseases trials where phase 3 rarer disease (prevalence <1/100,000) trials were more similar in size to those for phase 2 but were larger than those for phase 2 in the less rare disease (prevalence ≥1/100,000) trials.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | R Medicine > R Medicine (General) R Medicine > RC Internal medicine |
||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School > Clinical Trials Unit Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Medicine > Warwick Medical School > Health Sciences > Statistics and Epidemiology |
||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Rare diseases, Clinical trials | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases | ||||||
Publisher: | BioMed Central Ltd. | ||||||
ISSN: | 1750-1172 | ||||||
Official Date: | 2 March 2017 | ||||||
Dates: |
|
||||||
Volume: | 12 | ||||||
Number: | 44 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1186/s13023-017-0597-1 | ||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 21 June 2017 | ||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 22 June 2017 | ||||||
Funder: | Seventh Framework Programme (European Commission) (FP7) | ||||||
Grant number: | FP HEALTH 2013 – 602144 |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year