Analysis of Methods Used in Trials Containing Many Zeros

Abstract

TOPIC: Analysis of Methods Used in Trials Containing Many Zeros

In the recent years, many treatments have been developed for the cure of a variety of diseases. Many of these treatments, like the one used for the herpes zoster, are supposed to act in a multilevel way, when administered to patients. They either prevent the virus completely from being expressed or, when this is not possible, since each patient's body may react differently to the same treatment, they ease the pain caused by the disease. Such cases, most of the times, result in data that are consisted of many zeros belonging to those who eventually did not experience the disease. Thus, ways of treating properly this majority of zero scores are necessary, since if these scores are included in the analysis without some attention, they might dilute the real effect of the treatment and the results given might be inaccurate to trust. In this paper, some of the most known approaches, suggested for this issue, are analyzed and