Replies to post #252571 on Biotech Values

[mouton29]

I have the paper and I don't think that the "propensity matching" takes into account the degree of obesity (e.g., BMI), just as it fails to account for the severity of T2D. Thus, there is the possibilty -- indeed, likelihood -- that the patients receiving Ozempic were more obese and that this increases the risk of NAION; you would not jump to give Ozempic to someone with BMI of 25.1, I assume.

To achieve balance between cohorts (prescribed semaglutide or not) for each study population (T2D, and overweight or obese), 1:2 nearest-neighbor propensity score matching (caliper = 0.05) was used to account for demographic factors (sex, age); comorbidities related to NAION (systemic hyperten- sion, T2D, obstructive sleep apnea); indications for use of sema- glutide (T2D and obesity) and contraindications of semaglutide (personal or family history of multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2, thyroid cancer, chronic kidney disease, pancreatitis)8; covarying factors related to T2D or to overweight or obesity (hyperlipidemia, coronary artery disease); and use of drugs as- sociated with NAION (phosphodiesterase type 5 inhibitors,9 amiodarone1 0 ). No patient with NAION had received a-interferon.11 After matching, all standardized mean differ- ences (SMDs) for covariates were less than 0.1, and all SMDs and 2-way interactions among confounding factors were less than 0.15, which in the context of this study using propensity score matching indicates adequate balance between cohorts. Table 1 and Table 2 provide the characteristics of the T2D co- hort and the obese or overweight cohort, respectively, with fre- quency distributions and measures of variability.