Reducing Income Transfers to Refugee Immigrants: Does Starthelp Help You Start? In this paper we estimate the causal effect of lowering the public income transfers administered to newly arrived refugee immigrants in Denmark – the so-called starthelp – using a competing risk mixed proportional hazard framework. The two competing risks are exit to job and exit out of the labour force. A standard ...

BACKGROUND Trials financed by for-profit organizations have been associated with favorable outcomes of new treatments, although the effect size of funding source impact on outcome is unknown. The aim of this study was to estimate the effect size for a favorable outcome in randomized controlled trials (RCTs), stratified by funding source, that have been published in general medical journals. M...

In randomized controlled trials (RCTs), treatment assignment is unconfounded with baseline covariates, allowing outcomes to be directly compared between treatment arms. When outcomes are binary, the effect of treatment can be summarized using relative risks, absolute risk reductions and the number needed to treat (NNT). When outcomes are time-to-event in nature, the effect of treatment on the a...

Reduction of long-term mortality risk, an important clinical outcome for people in alcohol dependence treatment, can rarely be established in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). We calculated the reduction in all-cause mortality risk using data from short-term (6 and 12 months) double-blind RCTs comparing as-needed nalmefene treatment to placebo, and mortality risks from meta-analyses on all-c...

The construction of a Supersymmetric Grand Unified Model based on the Pati-Salam gauge group is briefly reviewed and the low energy consequences of the derived asymptotic Yukawa quasi-unification conditions are examined. In the framework of the resulting Constrained Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, the cosmological relic density of the bino-like LSP is calculated and the results are expli...

BACKGROUND Inadequate reporting undermines findings of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). This study assessed and compared articles published in high-impact general medical and specialized journals. METHODS Reports of RCTs published in high-impact general and specialized medical journals were identified through a search of MEDLINE from January to March of 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2010. Article...

INTRODUCTION A research-practice gap exists between what is known about conducting methodologically rigorous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and what is done. Evidence consistently shows that pediatric RCTs are susceptible to high risk of bias; therefore novel methods of influencing the design and conduct of trials are required. The objective of this study was to develop and pilot test a wi...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the prevalence of discontinuation and nonpublication of surgical versus medical randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and to explore risk factors for discontinuation and nonpublication of surgical RCTs. BACKGROUND Trial discontinuation has significant scientific, ethical, and economic implications. To date, the prevalence of discontinuation of surgical RCTs is unknown. ...

OBJECTIVES In rheumatology, five different billion-dollar drugs have emerged in recent years, making this subspecialty the focus of extensive advertising campaigns. Considering this development and the fact that the scientific content of advertisements has been questioned, we initiated a study to determine how evidence-based advertisements are in four leading journals of rheumatology. METHODS...

BACKGROUND There is considerable unexplained heterogeneity in previous meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) evaluating the effects of patient decision aids on the accuracy of knowledge of outcome probabilities. The purpose of this review was to explore possible effect modification by three covariates: the type of control intervention, decision aid quality and patients' baseline ...