La Reina schreef op 3 november 2020 18:11:
Basel-Stadt: Can public data showcase Ruconest is effective?
As discussed earlier in this write-up, Pharming Group has initiated multiple clinical trials to determine the effectiveness of Ruconest. As discussed in my previous article, Pharming Group already performed a small trial at University Hospital Basel wherein five patients were treated with Ruconest, and the bigger trial is also partially performed at University Hospital Basel; actually, the first patient of the new multinational trial was treated at that hospital as well.
I decided to search whether Basel-Stadt, the region wherein University Hospital Basel lies, published data about COVID-19 patients in hospitals. I hypothesised that COVID-19 data from Basel-Stadt could showcase that Ruconest is effective. In other words, maybe, we can make our own guess how the trial is faring by using publicly available data.
And after some exploration throughout the internet, I did find public data distributed officially by Basel-Stadt. Basel-Stadt reports daily or bi-weekly the number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19, and the number of COVID-19 patients in ICU. They do not report the number of hospitalizations. They only report the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 at the time of reporting. I was hoping for more useful data, but I figured it was worth a go either way.
I created a ratio: the total number of COVID-19 patients on ICU beds shared by the total number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19. Ruconest is a drug that should, in theory, dampen the load on ICUs, so in theory, Basel-Stadt should have fewer patients on ICU beds relative to the total number of patients hospitalized. Some countries published similar data, and some published other kinds of data. However, I was not able to show that Basel-Stadt's ratio was significantly better.
I think that the data is too general to make any assumptions about Ruconest's effectiveness. Even the IC patients/total patients ratio of countries like the Netherlands and the United Kingdom is vastly different due to cultural differences.
While it was a nice attempt, the data is too general to find out whether Ruconest is effective. If Basel-Stadt instead published data per patient - instead of daily capacities - I might have been able to make a better guess, since the average time spent in the hospital could have been significantly lower.