Number of medical breakthroughs may be declining

By Irada Yunusova

Any new possible treatment that is discovered undergoes thorough testing before being sold to patients. The effectiveness of a drug can be measured either by comparing its effects to a placebo (a sugar or water pill) or by directly comparing it to another drug.

Placebo-controlled studies have been the typical choice for studying treatment efficacy for years. However, according to Psych Central, "A new study suggests that there has been a drop in the extent to which new medical treatments are shown to be significantly more effective than placebos." Recently, researchers analyzed 315 randomly-selected, placebo-controlled trials conducted between 1966 and 2010. They discovered that the average effect size measured decreased from a peak of 4.51 in 1971-1980 to 1.36 in 2001-2010.

The decline in effect size over the past 40 years suggests that comparative effectiveness research in which treatments are compared to treatments already known to be effective may provide valuable information. It may be more useful to compare two or more treatments that are known to be effective in order to evaluate whether there are meaningful differences in their tolerability, safety, and costs.

References: http://psychcentral.com/news/2013/06/10/are-medical-breakthroughs-really-declining/55857.html