A study examines the likelihood of experiencing a heart attack (MI) in patients with established ischemic heart disease. Group A receives conventional treatment. After 7 years, 30 out of 150 patients have had an MI. Group B receives standard treatment plus a novel cardiac medication. After 7 years, 15 out of 90 patients have had an MI. What is the odds ratio of having an MI while taking the new drug compared to those who do not?
A new anti-epileptic drug is being tested for adolescents with absence seizures. The control group consists of 300 adolescents while 200 adolescents are given the new drug. After 6 months, 80 adolescents in the control group had a seizure while only 10 adolescents in the group taking the new medication had a seizure. What is the relative risk reduction?
What is the term for a drug that has its own effects but doesn’t treat the condition it is prescribed for?
A new screening tool for lower gastrointestinal malignancies has been developed known as the Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT). The test is hoped to be an improvement on the previous stool tests as the FIT targets human haemoglobin.
The researchers would like to determine the specificity of the FIT test for colorectal cancer in a study involving 3000 participants aged 50 and above. All participants undergo a FIT and are subsequently evaluated with colonoscopy, which is considered the gold standard test.
Out of the 1200 participants who tested positive on the FIT, 800 were later confirmed to have colorectal cancer on colonoscopy.
On the other hand, out of the 1800 participants who tested negative on the FIT, 100 were later found to have colorectal cancer on colonoscopy.
What is the specificity of the FIT test for colorectal cancer in this study?
As part of a clinical audit, a medical student is analysing the characteristics of patients attending a hypertension clinic. She calculates that the mean age of the patients is 56 years old, and that the variance of the data is 64. She wants to calculate the standard deviation of the data set.
What is the connection between standard deviation and variance?
The standardised mortality ratio for a group of elderly patients with antisocial personality disorder is 120 (95% CI 90-130). How should this result be interpreted?
A researcher is tasked with evaluating the effectiveness of olanzapine versus haloperidol in reducing symptom severity of schizophrenia (as per the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale) for each dollar spent. What would be the most suitable study approach?
You have collected blood pressure data of patients given a new medication being tested as a treatment for hypertension. The data includes the patient’s initial blood pressure reading, followed by a second measurement taken 10 minutes after administering the medication.
Upon initial analysis, it was found that the differences between the two measurements do not conform to a normal distribution.
What statistical test would be the most suitable to determine if there is a significant difference between the blood pressure readings before and after the administration of the new medication?
A disease is discovered to have a standard mortality ratio of 140 in a surveyed population. Is it accurate to say that the disease is more fatal in this age group?
A study testing a new prostate cancer screening tool enrolls 52,820 participants. Among the 8950 participants diagnosed with prostate cancer through histological examination, 8900 had a positive test outcome. Meanwhile, 13,750 healthy participants had a positive screening result. What is the specificity of this novel screening tool?