Audio-digital recordings used for independent confirmation of site-based MADRS interview scores.

Signal detection requires ratings reliability throughout a clinical trial. The confirmation of site-based rater scores by a second, independent and blinded rater is a reasonable metric of ratings reliability. We used audio-digital pens to record site-based interviews of the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) in a double-blind, placebo controlled trial of a novel antidepressant in treatment resistant depressed patients. Blinded, site-independent raters generated "dual" scores that revealed high correlations between site-based and site-independent raters (r=0.940 for all ratings) and high sensitivity, specificity, predictive values, and kappa coefficients for treatment response and non-response outcomes using the site-based rater scores as the standard. The blinded raters achieved an 89.4% overall accuracy and 0.786 kappa for matching the treatment response or non-response outcomes of the site-based raters. A limitation of this method is that independent ratings depend on the quality of site-based interviews and patient responses to the site-based interviewers. Nonetheless, this quality assurance strategy may have broad applicability for studies that use subjective measures and wherever ratings reliability is a concern. "Dual" scoring of recorded site-based ratings can be a relatively unobtrusive surveillance strategy to confirm scores and to identify and remediate rater "outliers" during a study.

Use of band-pass filter analysis to evaluate outcomes in an antidepressant trial for treatment resistant patients.

Band-pass filtering is a novel statistical methodology that proposes that filtering out data from trial sites generating non-plausible high or low levels of placebo response can yield a more accurate effect size and greater separation of active drug (when efficacious) from placebo. We applied band-pass filters to re-analyze data from a negative antidepressant trial (NCT00739908) evaluating CX157 (a reversible and selective monoamine oxidase inhibitor-A) versus placebo. 360 patients from 29 trial sites were randomized to either CX157 treatment (n=182) or placebo (n=178). We applied two filters of<3 or>7 points (filter #1) or<3 and>9 points (filter #2) mean change of the total MADRS placebo scores for each site. Trial sites that had mean placebo MADRS score changes exceeding the boundaries of these band-pass filter thresholds were considered non-informative and all of the data from these sites were excluded from the post-hoc re-analysis. The two band-pass filters reduced the sample of informative patients from 353 patients in the mITT population to 62 in filter #1 and 152 in the filter #2 group. The placebo response was reduced from 31.1% in the mITT population to 9.4% with filter #1 and 20.8% with filter #2. MMRM analysis revealed a non-statistically significant trend of p=0.13 and 0.16 for the two filters in contrast to the mITT population (p= 0.58). Our findings support the band-pass filter hypothesis and highlight issues related to site-based scoring variability and inappropriate subject selection that may contribute to trial failure.