January 27, 2016
How do we get information to make decisions about public health from randomized controlled trials (RCT’s)? Can we? Especially for nutrient trials?
At this point, we have seen so many problems with the design of RCT’s that get in the way of making public health decisions, i.e., does the nutrient benefit health? At what levels? What can we do?
Dr. Robert Heaney, our Research Director, has published a paper on the appropriate design of nutrient trials and, most of what we see is definitely not designed properly.
In the trial described in this newsletter, The Vitamin D Antenatal Asthma Reduction Trial (VDAART), there are several areas where the information we need is missing. Please note the detail discussed. We think this analysis was very misleading due to the requirements put on the RCT’s, not on the researchers.
