Choodari-Oskooei, B;
Bratton, DJ;
Gannon, MR;
Meade, AM;
Sydes, MR;
Parmar, MKB;
(2020)
Adding new experimental arms to randomised clinical trials: Impact on error rates.
Clinical Trials
10.1177/1740774520904346.
(In press).
Preview |
Text
1902.05336v1.pdf - Accepted Version Download (851kB) | Preview |
Abstract
Background: Experimental treatments pass through various stages of development. If a treatment passes through early-phase experiments, the investigators may want to assess it in a late-phase randomised controlled trial. An efficient way to do this is adding it as a new research arm to an ongoing trial while the existing research arms continue, a so-called multi-arm platform trial. The familywise type I error rate is often a key quantity of interest in any multi-arm platform trial. We set out to clarify how it should be calculated when new arms are added to a trial some time after it has started. / Methods: We show how the familywise type I error rate, any-pair and all-pairs powers can be calculated when a new arm is added to a platform trial. We extend the Dunnett probability and derive analytical formulae for the correlation between the test statistics of the existing pairwise comparison and that of the newly added arm. We also verify our analytical derivation via simulations. / Results: Our results indicate that the familywise type I error rate depends on the shared control arm information (i.e. individuals in continuous and binary outcomes and primary outcome events in time-to-event outcomes) from the common control arm patients and the allocation ratio. The familywise type I error rate is driven more by the number of pairwise comparisons and the corresponding (pairwise) type I error rates than by the timing of the addition of the new arms. The familywise type I error rate can be estimated using Šidák’s correction if the correlation between the test statistics of pairwise comparisons is less than 0.30. / Conclusions: The findings we present in this article can be used to design trials with pre-planned deferred arms or to add new pairwise comparisons within an ongoing platform trial where control of the pairwise error rate or familywise type I error rate (for a subset of pairwise comparisons) is required.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Adding new experimental arms to randomised clinical trials: Impact on error rates |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1177/1740774520904346 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/1740774520904346 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher’s terms and conditions. |
| Keywords: | Platform trials, adaptive trial designs, familywise type I error rate, pairwise error rate, STAMPEDE trial, multi-arm multi-stage, MAMS, survival time |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Inst of Clinical Trials and Methodology UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Inst of Clinical Trials and Methodology > MRC Clinical Trials Unit at UCL |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10093105 |
Archive Staff Only
 |
View Item |
