Researchers Are Interested in Determining Whether Oral Corticosteroid Administration Is

question 317

Multiple Choice

Researchers are interested in determining whether oral corticosteroid administration is a more effective treatment for patients with multiple sclerosis exacerbation than intravenous corticosteroid administration.  They plan to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to compare the efficacy of these 2 treatments for acute exacerbations in this population.  The primary outcome is defined as the proportion of patients with improvement on the Expanded Disability Status Scale at 4 weeks.  The table lists the studies that meet inclusion criteria for the meta-analysis: The researchers included only studies 2, 3, and 5 in their meta-analysis.  Which of the following statements concerning the possible results of the meta-analysis is most likely true?

• A)Compared with intravenous administration, oral corticosteroid administration will be significantly associated with improvement in scores on the Expanded Disability Status Scale
• B)Oral corticosteroid administration will not have a statistically significant benefit over intravenous administration for treating acute relapses
• C)Patients on oral corticosteroids will have 70% increased odds of improvement compared with patients on intravenous corticosteroids
• D)Results may overestimate the true effect size as they are based on a biased sample of the target population of studies
• E)The sample size in the meta-analysis will be too small to detect a significant difference between the 2 treatments

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