ArticleFrontiers in drug safety and regulation2024
Application of the target trial emulation framework to external comparator studies.
Article in Frontiers in drug safety and regulation, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Sieving for gold: external comparator studies to prioritize drugs for late-stage clinical trial.Journal of comparative effectiveness research · 2026Review
- On the use of external controls in clinical trials.Journal of the National Cancer Institute. Monographs · 2025Article
- External comparator studies and the joint application of the estimand and target trial emulation frameworks.Frontiers in drug safety and regulation · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
External comparator (EC) studies are increasingly being used to generate evidence that supports the evaluation of emerging pharmacological treatments for regulatory and health technology assessment (HTA) purposes. However, the reliability of evidence generated from EC studies can vary. In this paper, we outline how an existing framework for causal inference, the target trial emulation (TTE) framework, can be appropriately applied to improve the design and analysis of EC studies. Applying the TTE framework involves specifying the protocol of an ideal target trial which would answer the causal question of interest, then emulating its key elements under real-world (RW) settings. We describe each component of the original TTE framework and explain how it can be applied to EC studies, supplemented with practical recommendations. We also highlight special considerations and limitations in applying the TTE framework to EC studies. We describe how the TTE framework can be applied to improve the clarity, transparency, and reliability of evidence generated from EC studies.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.