RE:The EUPHRATES trial Thanks for the link TechOne. I started reading and stumped on a sentence regarding the result of the EUPHAS trial and it’s termination. I wonder if you (or anyone else) could help me understand if it actually is at odds with the second excerpt (and why), taken from an article of the Journal of the American Medical Association on the same trial.
From
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4066268/ Also, the absolute risk of death at 28 days improved significantly from 53% in the conventional therapy group to 32% in the PMX-DHP treated group [19]. This result, albeit encouraging, is considered controversial as the trial was stopped early after an interim analysis showed the mortality difference in a secondary endpoint.
From
https://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=184078#RESULTS
The [interim] analysis triggered the stopping rule based on a statistically significant reduction in mortality in the polymyxin B hemoperfusion group. Results were discussed with the president of the ethics committee (Internal Institutional Ethical Commission of the coordinating center), who declared it unethical to deprive a potentially beneficial therapy to a group of patients that carry high mortality. The study was thus terminated.