Developing new and effective antiviral drugs for COVID-19 is a global health priority. Several candidate drugs have been discovered through in vitro and in vivo studies; however, the clinical trial results have been inconsistent. It could be partially attributed to the imperfect design of clinical trials. As a result, several methodological issues, including the calculation of sample sizes for clinical trials for antiviral drugs, have been raised.
Read this article summarizing a study investigating the design of clinical trials for antiviral treatment using the viral dynamics model. Recently, researchers from Japan investigated how antiviral randomized clinical trials should be designed, with an emphasis on calculating sample size in randomized controlled trials. In addition, a modeling study was conducted to understand the reasons for the inconsistent results of the clinical trials and…
