Ann: iPPS Increases Cartilage Thickness in Phase 2 Trial, page-141

@Denial Yes, watching Fauci understandably claim RCT's were the gold standard of medical trials as he was beset by idiots all around him, rather overstates the perfection of RCT's. Anyone who understands regressional, ordinary least squares, analysis, will comprehend just one small control change, or one poorly measured aspect and two similar RCT's across the same study set can have entirely different outcomes.

My favourite quote of all time, "there are three types of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics" attributed to Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) British Prime Minster

But PAR has demonstrated evidence of efficacy from around 14/15 to 19/20 confidence levels, that Zilosul significantly reduced pain, improved function, and under MRI added thickness and volume to cartilage. 0.2mm added on average to cartilage in six months, that might be 2-3mm at best in young healthy individuals, whilst the control group deteriorated on average at -0.02 in line with -0.04mm deterioration commonly seen in sufferers per year.

As far as small sample population trials go, that was pretty compelling results across the board of indications with some variation of course. Seriously self defeating argument above. The difference between a 0.046 and 0.054 confidence interval around 0.05 is so easily swayed in such a small sample size. You don't throw out one as a failure and keep the other as absolute proof. The 0.05 is such an arbitrary p-value people cling to. Both are essentially reporting results with a 1 in 20 chance of the null hypothesis being true. Its not binary. Not one proof and one failure.

Now a better argument for the shorters/doubters (to add a little balance to my comments) is how easily PAR might change its phase III trial dosing which you or @Dungiven might add some decent perspective.