BPC-157 actually fixed my bad knee?? Is this placebo — what worked for you?

tyler_CSCS said:

The gap between trial results and real-world results is consistent and it is not fraud.

Agreeing with tyler_CSCS, and the qualification matters more than the agreement. Read four things before the headline number. The population, because trial populations are selected and supported in ways that real cohorts are not. The comparator, because "better than placebo" and "better than the current standard" are different claims and get reported identically. The primary endpoint as pre-registered, because a secondary endpoint promoted after the fact is a hypothesis rather than a finding. And the completion rate, because a large effect in the half of participants who finished is a different result from a large effect in everybody enrolled.

If somebody has the primary source to hand I would rather cite it than paraphrase it.

tyler_CSCS said:

The gap between trial results and real-world results is consistent and it is not fraud.

Pushing back on tyler_CSCS here. I would add the less popular caveat: these trial populations under-represented several groups, older adults and the highest BMI categories among them. The results probably generalise, and "probably" should be stated as an assumption rather than dropped.

Taking the question as asked, rather than the general version of it. Relative and absolute effects need reading together. A 20% relative reduction on a high baseline risk is a large absolute benefit; the same relative figure on a low baseline risk is a small one, and press summaries almost always quote the relative number because it is bigger.

Dr.KarenChen said:

Read four things before the headline number.

Can confirm. Same sequence, different timescale. I had assumed I was the exception until I read this.