Category Archives: Success
Meaningful Success or Failure: Both Only Come With Effort
For example, if I were a pharmaceutical company planning a clinical trial, I would try to start it in June or July and end it some time in the winter or spring. The theory is the drugs perceived efficacy may be enhanced by a seasonal effect. Now I will grant the perception of symptoms versus the progression of lesions may differ, but as a patient my perception of a drugs efficacy is driven in large part by my symptom progression. This sites data is ill suited to collecting MRI lesion data. However, it would seem this site is extremely well set up to capture and quantify a seasonality effect on symptoms.
I work with economic data, and we seasonally adjust data all the time.
Would it be possible to work a with a data set from Patients Like Me in an effort to try and quantify a seasonal effect on the reporting of new symptoms? It would seem plausible to look at the date new symptoms are reported. The results would not capture all of the symptoms experienced. So it won’t give an absolute percentage, but if one assumes the reported symptoms are representative of all the accumulation of new symptoms then the study would give a reasonable simulation for the MS population’s expected accumulation differences by season.
Ideally, I would suggest a test design where all new reported symptoms count as 1, with sums of new reports by symptom category for the time period be the variable for which seasonality is tested. The test population should include only IDs active during the entire period studied. Defining “active” is a potential problem, but I would start by setting out of scope all IDs who joined during the studied time, who never reported symptoms, and all IDs who have not returned after initial input of symptoms.
With a data set this large, I would prefer to break down the symptoms examined to a shorter list of 5 to 10 which may be the result of combining symptoms into a few broader categories. For example short term memory issues, name issues, cognitive fog, could be lumped together under one category like “Cognitive Function.” This could be treated differently from sensory issues and other grouped symptoms.
I would like to combine the symptoms for ease of research because I would subset the results where possible by various demographics, locations, length time with MS, and Disease Modifying Drug (DMD). I worry further parsing the data will prevent the identification of significance. As it is, I would love to see the data teased out for each of the DMDs to see whether any of the drugs reduces the impact of seasonality. With stat software from SAS, there are some pre-programmed packages to identify seasonality on the whole and for each of the sub groups. Have you at Patients Like Me done any of this type of research or are you aware of other research on seasonality already completed elsewhere?
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I have included the Kessler foundation in this email and Biogen who make the Tysabri I currently take.
Link to the Kessler foundation’s page talking about heat sensitivity:
http://kesslerfoundation.org/