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Originally Posted by Greg H
This is looking back at folks that they had already decided to treat with IST, so it's not a random trial, but includes folks that the docs figured, for whatever reason, might respond. In other words, you can't read this data and figure that nearly half of MDSers are going to respond to IST. You can read it to say that ATG alone is about three times as effective as CSA alone, and ATG plus CSA is twice as good as ATG alone.
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You bring up a good point, Greg. First, you have to keep in mind that the number of patients in a particular study may be quite small (the ones I've read so far have had 20 or fewer participants). If they say "10% showed..." and there were only 10 participants, that's one person. Second, often there has already been some screening as to who would be considered a likely candidate. People with hypoplastic MDS seem to show the best rate of response to ATG/cyclo, followed by those with RA. Trials involving people with RARS, RAEB or RAEB-t have not shown good results, so you have to look at the breakdown of who participated in the trial.