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New England Journal of Medicine

Final example is about clinical trails.
Clinical trial is to prove if the drug or treatment is really effective by randomly allocating relatively large group of subjects into new therapy /drug group and old therapy /drug group.

Without results of this study, we can not conclude that the new therapy /drug is really effective or not.

The figure is from results of DCCT (diabetes control and complications trial). In this study, about 1400 Insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus patients were randomly assigned to intensive blood glucose control group and conventional blood glucose control group.

The results is remarkable. If the blood level of patient are strictly controlled. the rate of retinopathy is much lower than that are not.

However, before this study, we did not have data that strict control of blood sugar level is really prevent progression of diabetic complications.