bear, a question for you re the Endpoints article re Novartis and their canakinumab drug.

From the article - "Using a simple biomarker test, Novartis’ $NVS development chief, and soon CEO, Vas Narasimhan says that the drug proved more clearly impactful for heart attack patients whose hsCRP level — a measure of inflammation using high-sensitivity C-reactive protein — fell below 2mg/L after three months of treatment. By that score, they tracked a 31% reduction in cardiovascular death and a 31% reduction in all-cause mortality."

Perhaps the answer is obvious but when they state 31% risk reduction is that absolute risk reduction or relative risk reduction? I would assume it is RRR. 

The other observation is that there trial had 10,000 patients over 6 years in their full population compared to about 2500 for BETonMACE for it's targetted population. I'm assuming the BoM trial design was powered statistically to yield statistically significant results if they are evident. (at least I hope that is the case).

The other significant effect was the 77% reduction in lung cancer mortality and this will probably lead to new discovery as to why this is happening I would assume.

Looks like it has the potential to be a major breakthrough?

Toinv