Absolute Risk Reduction

In epidemiology, the absolute risk reduction or risk difference is the decrease in risk of a given activity or treatment in relation to a control activity or treatment. It is the inverse of the number needed to treat.

In general, absolute risk reduction is the difference between the control group’s event rate (CER) and the experimental group’s event rate (EER). The difference is usually calculated with respect to two treatments A and B, with A typically a drug and B a placebo. For example, A could be a 5-year treatment with a hypothetical drug, and B is treatment with placebo, i.e. no treatment. A defined endpoint has to be specified, such as a survival or a response rate. For example: the appearance of lung cancer in a 5 year period. If the probabilities pA and pB of this endpoint under treatments A and B, respectively, are known, then the absolute risk reduction is computed as (pB - pA).

The inverse of the absolute risk reduction, NNT, is an important measure in pharmacoeconomics. If a clinical endpoint is devastating enough (e.g. death, heart attack), drugs with a low absolute risk reduction may still be indicated in particular situations. If the endpoint is minor, health insurers may decline to reimburse drugs with a low absolute risk reduction.

Read more about Absolute Risk Reduction:  Presenting Results, Worked Example

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