Ezetimibe Added to Statin Therapy after Acute Coronary Syndromes
2015 · paper · Clinical trials
A double-blind trial of 18,144 patients after acute coronary syndrome, comparing simvastatin plus ezetimibe with simvastatin alone. Adding ezetimibe lowered LDL cholesterol further and modestly reduced cardiovascular events (7-year rate 32.7% versus 34.7%).
0 findings
None that passed a second check.
4 minor (typos and the like; most checked by the judge only)
Wording In Table 1, the "Type of event" counts in the monotherapy group (2606/9077, 4253/9077, 2211/9077) add up to 9070, not 9077. In the ezetimibe group the counts add up to 9061, but the STEMI and unstable angina rows use 9067 as the denominator.
- p. 4 Table 1, At index event, Type of event (simvastatin monotherapy column)
2606/9077 (28.7)
- p. 4 Table 1, Type of event, NSTEMI row
4253/9077 (46.9)
- p. 4 Table 1, Type of event, unstable angina row
2211/9077 (24.4)
Only the authors can say what is right here.
Judge's note: I checked the page 4 image. The three categories look mutually exclusive, and they add up to neither group's printed denominator: 7 patients are unaccounted for in the monotherapy group, and in the ezetimibe group the denominators differ between rows (9067 vs 9061). Neither the Table 1 footnotes nor the text gives a missing-data or 'other' category. The printed percentages would be the same with a denominator of 9070, so only the authors can say which denominators are correct.
Second check: another model agreed
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Wording The Figure 2 caption defines major vascular events with "revascularization more than 30 days after randomization", while the text and Table 2 say "coronary revascularization 30 days or more" / "≥30 days".
- p. 9 Figure 2 caption
stroke, or revascularization more than 30 days after randomiza-
- p. 7 Table 2, Major vascular events row
stroke, or coronary revascularization ≥30 days after random-
- p. 6 Results text, CTT definition
or coronary revascularization 30 days or more
Judge's note: I checked the crops from pages 6, 7 and 9. The caption drops "coronary" and uses "more than" instead of "≥". Table 2 reports "any revascularization" and coronary revascularization as separate end points, so the caption's wording describes a slightly different composite from the CTT end point it is meant to name.
Second check: another model agreed
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Typo Affiliation footnote reads "Ziekenhuis, Nijmegen (T.O.O.), and the Netherlands Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden (J.W.J.) — both in the Netherlands"; the first "the Netherlands" is a stray insertion.
- p. 1 Affiliations footnote
and the Netherlands Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden (J.W.J.) — both in the Netherlands
Judge's note: The crop of page 1 shows this wording in the affiliation column, so it is not an extraction artefact. The country is named twice, and the first instance sits where an institution name would be expected. The likely intended text is "and the Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden (J.W.J.) — both in the Netherlands".
Second check: none (judge only)
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Typo The title in reference 22 reads "comparison of ezetimbe/simvastatin versus simvastatin monotherapy"; elsewhere the paper spells the drug "ezetimibe".
- p. 10 Reference 22
comparison of ezetimbe/simvastatin versus sim
Only the authors can say what is right here.
Judge's note: Rests on outside knowledge: whether the cited Am Heart J 2008 article's own title carries this misspelling. The page 10 image shows "ezetimbe" in reference 22. If the original title is spelled that way, the reference reproduces it faithfully; otherwise it is a typo.
Second check: none (judge only)