4 ms·

Just wanted to say that this seems like really good data. Pre-registered RCT with a large n and a very significant measured effect. I kind of wonder how necess

Just wanted to say that this seems like really good data. Pre-registered RCT with a large n and a very significant measured effect. I kind of wonder how necessary/effective this treatment would be in people who are already enough protein, they didn't include info on the diets of the patients involved.

criticaltinker 5y ago
For others who are curious, N=101 in the OP paper, which is a preliminary subset of the total subjects in the clinical trial (N=290, according to the registration). To your second point, arginine supplementation can still be helpful for otherwise healthy individuals who are undergoing physiological stress due to illness. FWIW there are some supporting references on the Wikipedia page.
ltbarcly3 5y ago
I'm not sure, the data seems oddly and unnecessarily skewed in terms of the group breakdown. - The placebo group was almost 10 years older on average. You might think that this would be fine, or even make the effect demonstrated even larger than the study suggests, except 8 patients were removed from the placebo group due to being moved to the ICU before the start of the study. This introduces a massive amount of selection bias into the data when you only had 48 in the placebo group to start with. - The placebo group had about half as many women as a % Of course there is an attempt to remove these confounding factors in some of the data, but the big results appear to be un-adjusted numbers (number of days in hospital being reduced, reduction of the need for oxygen, etc). There is also an odd coincidence that they selected 53 patients for the Placebo group, and 48 for the L-Arginine group, and the groups lost 8 and 3 patients to the ICU respectively, so the final groups were both 45. Is this normal in these types of studies? Why wouldn't they have made the intention to treat population 50 for both cases?
voldacar 5y ago
already eating enough protein*

criticaltinker 5y ago

For others who are curious, N=101 in the OP paper, which is a preliminary subset of the total subjects in the clinical trial (N=290, according to the registration). To your second point, arginine supplementation can still be helpful for otherwise healthy individuals who are undergoing physiological stress due to illness. FWIW there are some supporting references on the Wikipedia page.

ltbarcly3 5y ago

I'm not sure, the data seems oddly and unnecessarily skewed in terms of the group breakdown. - The placebo group was almost 10 years older on average. You might think that this would be fine, or even make the effect demonstrated even larger than the study suggests, except 8 patients were removed from the placebo group due to being moved to the ICU before the start of the study. This introduces a massive amount of selection bias into the data when you only had 48 in the placebo group to start with. - The placebo group had about half as many women as a % Of course there is an attempt to remove these confounding factors in some of the data, but the big results appear to be un-adjusted numbers (number of days in hospital being reduced, reduction of the need for oxygen, etc). There is also an odd coincidence that they selected 53 patients for the Placebo group, and 48 for the L-Arginine group, and the groups lost 8 and 3 patients to the ICU respectively, so the final groups were both 45. Is this normal in these types of studies? Why wouldn't they have made the intention to treat population 50 for both cases?

voldacar 5y ago

already eating enough protein*