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Increasing efficiency of preclinical research by group sequential designs.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Neumann, Konrad 
Grittner, Ulrike 
Piper, Sophie K 
Rex, Andre 
Florez-Vargas, Oscar 

Abstract

Despite the potential benefits of sequential designs, studies evaluating treatments or experimental manipulations in preclinical experimental biomedicine almost exclusively use classical block designs. Our aim with this article is to bring the existing methodology of group sequential designs to the attention of researchers in the preclinical field and to clearly illustrate its potential utility. Group sequential designs can offer higher efficiency than traditional methods and are increasingly used in clinical trials. Using simulation of data, we demonstrate that group sequential designs have the potential to improve the efficiency of experimental studies, even when sample sizes are very small, as is currently prevalent in preclinical experimental biomedicine. When simulating data with a large effect size of d = 1 and a sample size of n = 18 per group, sequential frequentist analysis consumes in the long run only around 80% of the planned number of experimental units. In larger trials (n = 36 per group), additional stopping rules for futility lead to the saving of resources of up to 30% compared to block designs. We argue that these savings should be invested to increase sample sizes and hence power, since the currently underpowered experiments in preclinical biomedicine are a major threat to the value and predictiveness in this research domain.

Description

Keywords

Biomedical Research, Research Design

Journal Title

PLoS Biol

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

1544-9173
1545-7885

Volume Title

15

Publisher

Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Sponsorship
German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) www.bmbf.de (grant number 01EO1301).