Analysis of repeated measurements with dropouts among Alzheimer's disease patients using summary measures and meta-analysis.
A method of stratifying the data according to the patterns of missing observations, summarizing each subject's repeated measurements by a summary measure and then comparing the treatment groups with the help of a distribution-free test based on the summary measure, is used here to compare the efficacy of tacrine dose regimens with that of placebo in a recent trial in Alzheimer's disease patients. The usefulness of the method of meta-analysis for comparing the treatment groups, in the presence of missing data, is also investigated.
Talwalker
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Searle, Skokie, Illinois 60077, USA.
D000544:Alzheimer Disease / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000523:psychology; D002986:Clinical Trials as Topic; D006801:Humans; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D018697:Nootropic Agents / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000627:therapeutic use; D010352:Patient Dropouts / Q000523:psychology / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D012044:Regression Analysis; D012107:Research Design; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D013619:Tacrine / Q000008:administration & dosage / Q000627:therapeutic use
D018697:Nootropic Agents; D013619:Tacrine