Chapter 1: Clinical Trials of Pain Treatment: Single Dose Trials

Question 3.4

In this graph as in the previous graph, there is no difference between Drug X and placebo, but here the standard analgesic control has been included and is superior to both Drug X and placebo.

Treatments were placebo, drug X, and morphine. Morphine gave a large amount of relief, statistically superior to the low-relief drug X and placebo, which were similar to each other.

What is your conclusion about the effectiveness of Drug X? Is your conclusion affected by the inclusion of the morphine data in this experiment?

Drug X is ineffective in this condition. The superiority of morphine to placebo (and Drug X) demonstrates the sensitivity of the assay.

The result is inconclusive.