Sunday, August 29, 2010

Quick statistical clarification...

A reader was kind enough to email me with a couple of questions about my last post and I realize it is not as clear as it might be.

There are 167 patients who are low-risk with at least six years of data. Of this 167, 18 lost remission -- the remaining 149 remain in remission at six years. The last to lose remission happened about 3.2 years after reaching remission. So put another way, everybody still in remission at that point is in remission about three years later -- despite being on no meds.

BB once told me that in a particular data set we were looking at, the group losing remission includes people that can no longer be considered as being in remission for any reason -- like failing to look both ways before they cross the street! I do not know if that holds true for this particular data set, but if it does, then the real rate of remission loss is lower than the figure above would imply (still less than 10 percent).

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