I have three data points across nine months, which I hope is enough to see a trend.
I suspect the usual explanation for this is wrong, or at least incomplete.
I am aware this may have a boring answer. I would still like the boring answer stated clearly.
Can someone derive this rather than assert it?
Because two papers on SUSTAIN-6 are usually reporting two different estimands from the same randomisation. The treatment-policy estimand asks what happened to everyone assigned, including those who stopped; the trial-product estimand asks what happens if you keep taking it. The second is always the larger number, and both are legitimate answers to different questions. Then there is the analysis population — randomised, treated, or completers — and the handling of missing data, where a last-observation-carried-forward and a multiple imputation can differ by a point or more. Neither paper is wrong. Read the statistical methods section and you will find both figures defined in it.
Answer first: read the primary endpoint, the comparator and the population before you read the effect size. Almost every argument on this site about a trial is really an argument about one of those three.
Intention-to-treat and per-protocol analyses answer different questions. ITT asks what happens if you offer the treatment; per-protocol asks what happens if it is taken as directed. The gap between the two is a measure of how tolerable the protocol was.
The part that matters: confidence intervals matter more than point estimates when two trials disagree. Two studies reporting fifteen and twenty per cent whose intervals overlap heavily have not disagreed about anything.
The cardiovascular outcome programme in this class runs to several large randomised trials — LEADER for liraglutide, SUSTAIN-6 and SELECT for semaglutide, REWIND for dulaglutide — and they are the reason the class is discussed as more than a weight intervention.
Be careful about generalising from a trial population to yourself. The exclusion criteria are usually the most informative page in the supplement.
Read the protocol and the statistical analysis plan if the result matters to you. Both are usually published alongside.
Analytical standards and reagents with traceable certificates. Every quantitative result you read inherits the accuracy of the standard behind it.
Shop standardsAsk PeptideStack is a static archive. Posting is closed, but the norms are worth stating: answer the question that was asked, show your working, cite the trial or the certificate, and say plainly where the evidence runs out.