RE: RNS22 Feb 2023 09:46
I found this very interesting in helping myself understand the benefits of this approach.
“Even if our primary endpoint was not achieved, there's still information in that data that can help us as we think about the next trial we might want to do. It could be that we want to test this drug in a different population. It could be that we're thinking about other drugs that we might want to be testing. Post-hoc analyses are questions that we try to answer with our data after the study had finished and was not the intent of that particular study”
In a post-hoc analysis of a clinical trial, researchers will often further divide data to see if the drug had benefits for certain groups. Consider an example where the initial data for a trial has shown no benefit in the group that received the drug when compared to a placebo group. A researcher conducting a post-hoc analysis might look at only people who are under a certain age, or only people of a certain sex, and find that there is evidence that in this smaller group, that participants did appear to decline slower or survive longer.