Intrathecal Gene Therapy for Giant Axonal Neuropathy.

BACKGROUND: Giant axonal neuropathy is a rare, autosomal recessive, pediatric, polysymptomatic, neurodegenerative disorder caused by biallelic loss-of-function variants in GAN, the gene encoding gigaxonin. METHODS: We conducted an intrathecal dose-escalation study of scAAV9/JeT-GAN (a self-complementary adeno-associated virus-based gene therapy containing the GAN transgene) in children with giant axonal neuropathy. Safety was the primary end point. The key secondary clinical end point was at least a 95% posterior probability of slowing the rate of change (i.e., slope) in the 32-item Motor Function Measure total percent score at 1 year after treatment, as compared with the pretreatment slope. RESULTS: One of four intrathecal doses of scAAV9/JeT-GAN was administered to 14 participants - 3.5×1013 total vector genomes (vg) (in 2 participants), 1.2×1014 vg (in 4), 1.8×1014 vg (in 5), and 3.5×1014 vg (in 3). During a median observation period of 68.7 months (range, 8.6 to 90.5), of 48 serious adverse events that had occurred, 1 (fever) was possibly related to treatment; 129 of 682 adverse events were possibly related to treatment. The mean pretreatment slope in the total cohort was -7.17 percentage points per year (95% credible interval, -8.36 to -5.97). At 1 year after treatment, posterior mean changes in slope were -0.54 percentage points (95% credible interval, -7.48 to 6.28) with the 3.5×1013-vg dose, 3.23 percentage points (95% credible interval, -1.27 to 7.65) with the 1.2×1014-vg dose, 5.32 percentage points (95% credible interval, 1.07 to 9.57) with the 1.8×1014-vg dose, and 3.43 percentage points (95% credible interval, -1.89 to 8.82) with the 3.5×1014-vg dose. The corresponding posterior probabilities for slowing the slope were 44% (95% credible interval, 43 to 44); 92% (95% credible interval, 92 to 93); 99% (95% credible interval, 99 to 99), which was above the efficacy threshold; and 90% (95% credible interval, 89 to 90). Between 6 and 24 months after gene transfer, sensory-nerve action potential amplitudes increased, stopped declining, or became recordable after being absent in 6 participants but remained absent in 8. CONCLUSIONS: Intrathecal gene transfer with scAAV9/JeT-GAN for giant axonal neuropathy was associated with adverse events and resulted in a possible benefit in motor function scores and other measures at some vector doses over a year. Further studies are warranted to determine the safety and efficacy of intrathecal AAV-mediated gene therapy in this disorder. (Funded by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and others; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT02362438.).

Bayesian inference for prediction of survival probability in prime-boost vaccination regimes.

We focus on Bayesian inference for survival probabilities in a prime-boost vaccination regime in the development of an Ebola vaccine. We are interested in the heterologous prime-boost regimen (unmatched vaccine deliverys using the same antigen) due to its demonstrated durable immunity, well-tolerated safety profile, and suitability as a population vaccination strategy. Our research is motivated by the need to estimate the survival probability given the administered dosage. To do so, we establish two key relationships. Firstly, we model the connection between the designed dose concentration and the induced antibody count using a Bayesian response surface model. Secondly, we model the association between the antibody count and the probability of survival when experimental subjects are exposed to the Ebola virus in a controlled setting using a Bayesian probability of survival model. Finally, we employ a combination of the two models with dose concentration as the predictor of the survival probability for a future vaccinated population. We implement our two-level Bayesian model in Stan, and illustrate its use with simulated and real-world data. Performance of this model is evaluated via simulation. Our work offers a new application of drug synergy models to examine prime-boost vaccine efficacy, and does so using a hierarchical Bayesian framework that allows us to use dose concentration to predict survival probability.

Bayesian Complex Innovative Trial Designs (CIDs) and Their Use in Drug Development for Rare Disease.

As the temporal, financial, and ethical cost of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) continues to rise, researchers and regulators in drug discovery and development face increasing pressure to make better use of existing data sources. This pressure is especially high in rare disease, where traditionally designed RCTs are often infeasible due to the inability to recruit enough patients or the unwillingness of patients or trial leaders to randomly assign anyone to placebo. Bayesian statistical methods have recently been recommended in such settings for their ability to combine disparate data sources, increasing overall study power. The use of these methods has received a boost in the United States thanks to a new willingness by regulators at the Food and Drug Administration to consider complex innovative trial designs. These designs allow trialists to change the nature of the trial (eg, stop early for success or futility, drop an underperforming trial arm, incorporate data on historical controls, etc) while it is still running. In this article, we review a broad collection of Bayesian techniques useful in rare disease research, indicating the benefits and risks associated with each. We begin with relatively innocuous methods for combining information from RCTs and proceed on through increasingly innovative approaches that borrow strength from increasingly heterogeneous and less carefully curated data sources. We also offer 2 examples from the very recent literature illustrating how clinical pharmacology principles can make important contributions to such designs, confirming the interdisciplinary nature of this work.

Hierarchical Bayesian modelling of disease progression to inform clinical trial design in centronuclear myopathy.

BACKGROUND: Centronuclear myopathies are severe rare congenital diseases. The clinical variability and genetic heterogeneity of these myopathies result in major challenges in clinical trial design. Alternative strategies to large placebo-controlled trials that have been used in other rare diseases (e.g., the use of surrogate markers or of historical controls) have limitations that Bayesian statistics may address. Here we present a Bayesian model that uses each patient's own natural history study data to predict progression in the absence of treatment. This prospective multicentre natural history evaluated 4-year follow-up data from 59 patients carrying mutations in the MTM1 or DNM2 genes. METHODS: Our approach focused on evaluation of forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) in 6- to 18-year-old children. A patient was defined as a responder if an improvement was observed after treatment and the predictive probability of such improvement in absence of intervention was less than 0.01. An FEV1 response was considered clinically relevant if it corresponded to an increase of more than 8%. RESULTS: The key endpoint of a clinical trial using this model is the rate of response. The power of the study is based on the posterior probability that the rate of response observed is greater than the rate of response that would be observed in the absence of treatment predicted based on the individual patient's previous natural history. In order to appropriately control for Type 1 error, the threshold probability by which the difference in response rates exceeds zero was adapted to 91%, ensuring a 5% overall Type 1 error rate for the trial. CONCLUSIONS: Bayesian statistical analysis of natural history data allowed us to reliably simulate the evolution of symptoms for individual patients over time and to probabilistically compare these simulated trajectories to actual observed post-treatment outcomes. The proposed model adequately predicted the natural evolution of patients over the duration of the study and will facilitate a sufficiently powerful trial design that can cope with the disease's rarity. Further research and ongoing dialog with regulatory authorities are needed to allow for more applications of Bayesian statistics in orphan disease research.

Pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic data extrapolation models for improved pediatric efficacy and toxicity estimation, with application to secondary hyperparathyroidism.

In most drug development settings, the regulatory approval process is accompanied by extensive studies performed to understand the drug's pharmacokinetic (PK) and pharmacodynamic (PD) properties. In this article, we attempt to utilize the rich PK/PD data to inform the borrowing of information from adults during pediatric drug development. In pediatric settings, it is especially crucial that we are parsimonious with the patients recruited for experimentation. We illustrate our approaches in the context of clinical trials of cinacalcet for treating secondary hyperparathyroidism in pediatric and adult patients with chronic kidney disease, where we model both parathyroid hormone (efficacy endpoint) and corrected calcium levels (safety endpoint). We use population PK/PD modeling of the cinacalcet data to quantitatively assess the similarity between adults and children, and use this information in various hierarchical Bayesian adult borrowing rules whose statistical properties can then be evaluated. In particular, we simulate the bias and mean square error performance of our approaches in settings where borrowing is and is not warranted to inform guidelines for the future use of our methods.

Optimizing interim analysis timing for Bayesian adaptive commensurate designs.

In developing products for rare diseases, statistical challenges arise due to the limited number of patients available for participation in drug trials and other clinical research. Bayesian adaptive clinical trial designs offer the possibility of increased statistical efficiency, reduced development cost and ethical hazard prevention via their incorporation of evidence from external sources (historical data, expert opinions, and real-world evidence), and flexibility in the specification of interim looks. In this paper, we propose a novel Bayesian adaptive commensurate design that borrows adaptively from historical information and also uses a particular payoff function to optimize the timing of the study's interim analysis. The trial payoff is a function of how many samples can be saved via early stopping and the probability of making correct early decisions for either futility or efficacy. We calibrate our Bayesian algorithm to have acceptable long-run frequentist properties (Type I error and power) via simulation at the design stage. We illustrate our approach using a pediatric trial design setting testing the effect of a new drug for a rare genetic disease. The optimIA R package available at https://github.com/wxwx1993/Bayesian_IA_Timing provides an easy-to-use implementation of our approach.

Borrowing from Historical Control Data in Cancer Drug Development: A Cautionary Tale and Practical Guidelines.

Some clinical trialists, especially those working in rare or pediatric disease, have suggested borrowing information from similar but already-completed clinical trials. This paper begins with a case study in which relying solely on historical control information would have erroneously resulted in concluding a significant treatment effect. We then attempt to catalog situations where borrowing historical information may or may not be advisable using a series of carefully designed simulation studies. We use an MCMC-driven Bayesian hierarchical parametric survival modeling approach to analyze data from a sponsor's colorectal cancer study. We also apply these same models to simulated data comparing the effective historical sample size, bias, 95% credible interval widths, and empirical coverage probabilities across the simulated cases. We find that even after accounting for variations in study design, baseline characteristics, and standard-of-care improvement, our approach consistently identifies Bayesianly significant differences between the historical and concurrent controls under a range of priors on the degree of historical data borrowing. Our simulation studies are far from exhaustive, but inform the design of future trials. When the historical and current controls are not dissimilar, Bayesian methods can still moderate borrowing to a more appropriate level by adjusting for important covariates and adopting sensible priors.

Multiplicity-adjusted semiparametric benefiting subgroup identification in clinical trials.

Background A recent focus in the health sciences has been the development of personalized medicine, which includes determining the population for which a given treatment is effective. Due to limited data, identifying the true benefiting population is a challenging task. To tackle this difficulty, the credible subgroups approach provides a pair of bounding subgroups for the true benefiting subgroup, constructed so that one is contained by the benefiting subgroup while the other contains the benefiting subgroup with high probability. However, the method has so far only been developed for parametric linear models. Methods In this article, we develop the details required to follow the credible subgroups approach in more realistic settings by considering nonlinear and semiparametric regression models, supported for regulatory science by conditional power simulations. We also present an improved multiple testing approach using a step-down procedure. We evaluate our approach via simulations and apply it to data from four trials of Alzheimer's disease treatments carried out by AbbVie. Results Semiparametric modeling yields credible subgroups that are more robust to violations of linear treatment effect assumptions, and careful choice of the population of interest as well as the step-down multiple testing procedure result in a higher rate of detection of benefiting types of patients. The approach allows us to identify types of patients that benefit from treatment in the Alzheimer's disease trials. Conclusion Attempts to identify benefiting subgroups of patients in clinical trials are often met with skepticism due to a lack of multiplicity control and unrealistically restrictive assumptions. Our proposed approach merges two techniques, credible subgroups, and semiparametric regression, which avoids these problems and makes benefiting subgroup identification practical and reliable.

Diagnostics for generalized linear hierarchical models in network meta-analysis.

Network meta-analysis (NMA) combines direct and indirect evidence comparing more than 2 treatments. Inconsistency arises when these 2 information sources differ. Previous work focuses on inconsistency detection, but little has been done on how to proceed after identifying inconsistency. The key issue is whether inconsistency changes an NMA's substantive conclusions. In this paper, we examine such discrepancies from a diagnostic point of view. Our methods seek to detect influential and outlying observations in NMA at a trial-by-arm level. These observations may have a large effect on the parameter estimates in NMA, or they may deviate markedly from other observations. We develop formal diagnostics for a Bayesian hierarchical model to check the effect of deleting any observation. Diagnostics are specified for generalized linear hierarchical NMA models and investigated for both published and simulated datasets. Results from our example dataset using either contrast- or arm-based models and from the simulated datasets indicate that the sources of inconsistency in NMA tend not to be influential, though results from the example dataset suggest that they are likely to be outliers. This mimics a familiar result from linear model theory, in which outliers with low leverage are not influential. Future extensions include incorporating baseline covariates and individual-level patient data.

Statistical modeling for Bayesian extrapolation of adult clinical trial information in pediatric drug evaluation.

Children represent a large underserved population of "therapeutic orphans," as an estimated 80% of children are treated off-label. However, pediatric drug development often faces substantial challenges, including economic, logistical, technical, and ethical barriers, among others. Among many efforts trying to remove these barriers, increased recent attention has been paid to extrapolation; that is, the leveraging of available data from adults or older age groups to draw conclusions for the pediatric population. The Bayesian statistical paradigm is natural in this setting, as it permits the combining (or "borrowing") of information across disparate sources, such as the adult and pediatric data. In this paper, authored by the pediatric subteam of the Drug Information Association Bayesian Scientific Working Group and Adaptive Design Working Group, we develop, illustrate, and provide suggestions on Bayesian statistical methods that could be used to design improved pediatric development programs that use all available information in the most efficient manner. A variety of relevant Bayesian approaches are described, several of which are illustrated through 2 case studies: extrapolating adult efficacy data to expand the labeling for Remicade to include pediatric ulcerative colitis and extrapolating adult exposure-response information for antiepileptic drugs to pediatrics.

Bayesian hierarchical models for network meta-analysis incorporating nonignorable missingness.

Network meta-analysis expands the scope of a conventional pairwise meta-analysis to simultaneously compare multiple treatments, synthesizing both direct and indirect information and thus strengthening inference. Since most of trials only compare two treatments, a typical data set in a network meta-analysis managed as a trial-by-treatment matrix is extremely sparse, like an incomplete block structure with significant missing data. Zhang et al. proposed an arm-based method accounting for correlations among different treatments within the same trial and assuming that absent arms are missing at random. However, in randomized controlled trials, nonignorable missingness or missingness not at random may occur due to deliberate choices of treatments at the design stage. In addition, those undertaking a network meta-analysis may selectively choose treatments to include in the analysis, which may also lead to missingness not at random. In this paper, we extend our previous work to incorporate missingness not at random using selection models. The proposed method is then applied to two network meta-analyses and evaluated through extensive simulation studies. We also provide comprehensive comparisons of a commonly used contrast-based method and the arm-based method via simulations in a technical appendix under missing completely at random and missing at random.

Design and analysis of Bayesian adaptive crossover trials for evaluating contact lens safety and efficacy.

A crossover study, also referred to as a crossover trial, is a form of longitudinal study. Subjects are randomly assigned to different arms of the study and receive different treatments sequentially. While there are many frequentist methods to analyze data from a crossover study, random effects models for longitudinal data are perhaps most naturally modeled within a Bayesian framework. In this article, we introduce a Bayesian adaptive approach to crossover studies for both efficacy and safety endpoints using Gibbs sampling. Using simulation, we find our approach can detect a true difference between two treatments with a specific false-positive rate that we can readily control via the standard equal-tail posterior credible interval. We then illustrate our Bayesian approaches using real data from Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Inc. contact lens studies. We then design a variety of Bayesian adaptive predictive probability crossover studies for single and multiple continuous efficacy endpoints, indicate their extension to binary safety endpoints, and investigate their frequentist operating characteristics via simulation. The Bayesian adaptive approach emerges as a crossover trials tool that is useful yet surprisingly overlooked to date, particularly in contact lens development.

A hierarchical Bayesian approach for combining pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modeling and Phase IIa trial design in orphan drugs: Treating adrenoleukodystrophy with Lorenzo's oil.

X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (X-ALD) is a rare, progressive, and typically fatal neurodegenerative disease. Lorenzo's oil (LO) is one of the few X-ALD treatments available, but little has been done to establish its clinical efficacy or indications for its use. In this article, we analyze data on 116 male asymptomatic pediatric patients who were administered LO. We offer a hierarchical Bayesian statistical approach to understand LO pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD) resulting from an accumulation of very long-chain fatty acids. We experiment with individual- and observational-level errors and various choices of prior distributions and deal with the limitation of having just one observation per administration of the drug, as opposed to the more usual multiple observations per administration. We link LO dose to the plasma erucic acid concentrations by PK modeling, and then link this concentration to a biomarker (C26, a very long-chain fatty acid) by PD modeling. Next, we design a Bayesian Phase IIa study to estimate precisely what improvements in the biomarker can arise from various LO doses while simultaneously modeling a binary toxicity endpoint. Our Bayesian adaptive algorithm emerges as reasonably robust and efficient while still retaining good classical (frequentist) operating characteristics. Future work looks toward using the results of this trial to design a Phase III study linking LO dose to actual improvements in health status, as measured by the appearance of brain lesions observed via magnetic resonance imaging.

A practical Bayesian stepped wedge design for community-based cluster-randomized clinical trials: The British Columbia Telehealth Trial.

BACKGROUND: Many clinical trial designs are impractical for community-based clinical intervention trials. Stepped wedge trial designs provide practical advantages, but few descriptions exist of their clinical implementational features, statistical design efficiencies, and limitations. OBJECTIVES: Enhance efficiency of stepped wedge trial designs by evaluating the impact of design characteristics on statistical power for the British Columbia Telehealth Trial. METHODS: The British Columbia Telehealth Trial is a community-based, cluster-randomized, controlled clinical trial in rural and urban British Columbia. To determine the effect of an Internet-based telehealth intervention on healthcare utilization, 1000 subjects with an existing diagnosis of congestive heart failure or type 2 diabetes will be enrolled from 50 clinical practices. Hospital utilization is measured using a composite of disease-specific hospital admissions and emergency visits. The intervention comprises online telehealth data collection and counseling provided to support a disease-specific action plan developed by the primary care provider. The planned intervention is sequentially introduced across all participating practices. We adopt a fully Bayesian, Markov chain Monte Carlo-driven statistical approach, wherein we use simulation to determine the effect of cluster size, sample size, and crossover interval choice on type I error and power to evaluate differences in hospital utilization. RESULTS: For our Bayesian stepped wedge trial design, simulations suggest moderate decreases in power when crossover intervals from control to intervention are reduced from every 3 to 2 weeks, and dramatic decreases in power as the numbers of clusters decrease. Power and type I error performance were not notably affected by the addition of nonzero cluster effects or a temporal trend in hospitalization intensity. CONCLUSION/LIMITATIONS: Stepped wedge trial designs that intervene in small clusters across longer periods can provide enhanced power to evaluate comparative effectiveness, while offering practical implementation advantages in geographic stratification, temporal change, use of existing data, and resource distribution. Current population estimates were used; however, models may not reflect actual event rates during the trial. In addition, temporal or spatial heterogeneity can bias treatment effect estimates.

A Bayesian credible subgroups approach to identifying patient subgroups with positive treatment effects.

Many new experimental treatments benefit only a subset of the population. Identifying the baseline covariate profiles of patients who benefit from such a treatment, rather than determining whether or not the treatment has a population-level effect, can substantially lessen the risk in undertaking a clinical trial and expose fewer patients to treatments that do not benefit them. The standard analyses for identifying patient subgroups that benefit from an experimental treatment either do not account for multiplicity, or focus on testing for the presence of treatment-covariate interactions rather than the resulting individualized treatment effects. We propose a Bayesian credible subgroups method to identify two bounding subgroups for the benefiting subgroup: one for which it is likely that all members simultaneously have a treatment effect exceeding a specified threshold, and another for which it is likely that no members do. We examine frequentist properties of the credible subgroups method via simulations and illustrate the approach using data from an Alzheimer's disease treatment trial. We conclude with a discussion of the advantages and limitations of this approach to identifying patients for whom the treatment is beneficial.

Hierarchical Bayesian approaches for detecting inconsistency in network meta-analysis.

Network meta-analysis (NMA), also known as multiple treatment comparisons, is commonly used to incorporate direct and indirect evidence comparing treatments. With recent advances in methods and software, Bayesian approaches to NMA have become quite popular and allow models of previously unanticipated complexity. However, when direct and indirect evidence differ in an NMA, the model is said to suffer from inconsistency. Current inconsistency detection in NMA is usually based on contrast-based (CB) models; however, this approach has certain limitations. In this work, we propose an arm-based random effects model, where we detect discrepancy of direct and indirect evidence for comparing two treatments using the fixed effects in the model while flagging extreme trials using the random effects. We define discrepancy factors to characterize evidence of inconsistency for particular treatment comparisons, which is novel in NMA research. Our approaches permit users to address issues previously tackled via CB models. We compare sources of inconsistency identified by our approach and existing loop-based CB methods using real and simulated datasets and demonstrate that our methods can offer powerful inconsistency detection. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Flexible Bayesian survival modeling with semiparametric time-dependent and shape-restricted covariate effects.

Presently, there are few options with available software to perform a fully Bayesian analysis of time-to-event data wherein the hazard is estimated semi- or non-parametrically. One option is the piecewise exponential model, which requires an often unrealistic assumption that the hazard is piecewise constant over time. The primary aim of this paper is to construct a tractable semiparametric alternative to the piecewise exponential model that assumes the hazard is continuous, and to provide modifiable, user-friendly software that allows the use of these methods in a variety of settings. To accomplish this aim, we use a novel model formulation for the log-hazard based on a low-rank thin plate linear spline that readily facilitates adjustment for covariates with time-dependent and proportional hazards effects, possibly subject to shape restrictions. We investigate the performance of our model choices via simulation. We then analyze colorectal cancer data from a clinical trial comparing the effectiveness of two novel treatment regimes relative to the standard of care for overall survival. We estimate a time-dependent hazard ratio for each novel regime relative to the standard of care while adjusting for the effect of aspartate transaminase, a biomarker of liver function, that is subject to a non-decreasing shape restriction.

A model-based approach to assess the exposure-response relationship of Lorenzo's oil in adrenoleukodystrophy.

AIMS: X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (X-ALD) is a peroxisomal disorder, most commonly affecting boys, associated with increased very long chain fatty acids (C26:0) in all tissues, causing cerebral demyelination and adrenocortical insufficiency. Certain monounsaturated long chain fatty acids including oleic and erucic acids, known as Lorenzo's oil (LO), lower plasma C26:0 levels. The aims of this study were to characterize the effect of LO administration on plasma C26:0 concentrations and to determine whether there is an association between plasma concentrations of erucic acid or C26:0 and the likelihood of developing brain MRI abnormalities in asymptomatic boys. METHODS: Non-linear mixed effects modelling was performed on 2384 samples collected during an open label single arm trial. The subjects (n = 104) were administered LO daily at ~2-3 mg kg(-1) with a mean follow-up of 4.88 ± 2.76 years. The effect of erucic acid exposure on plasma C26:0 concentrations was characterized by an inhibitory fractional Emax model. A Weibull model was used to characterize the time-to-developing MRI abnormality. RESULTS: The population estimate for the fractional maximum reduction of C26:0 plasma concentrations was 0.76 (bootstrap 95% CI 0.73, 0.793). Our time-to-event analyses showed that every mg l(-1) increase in time-weighted average of erucic acid and C26:0 plasma concentrations was, respectively, associated with a 3.7% reduction and a 753% increase in the hazard of developing MRI abnormality. However, the results were not significant (P = 0.5344, 0.1509, respectively). CONCLUSIONS: LO administration significantly reduces the abnormally high plasma C26:0 concentrations in X-ALD patients. Further studies to evaluate the effect of LO on the likelihood of developing brain MRI abnormality are warranted.

Combining Non-randomized and Randomized Data in Clinical Trials Using Commensurate Priors.

Randomization eliminates selection bias, and attenuates imbalance among study arms with respect to prognostic factors, both known and unknown. Thus, information arising from randomized clinical trials (RCTs) is typically considered the gold standard for comparing therapeutic interventions in confirmatory studies. However, RCTs are limited in contexts wherein patients who are willing to accept a random treatment assignment represent only a subset of the patient population. By contrast, observational studies (OSs) often enroll patient cohorts that better reflect the broader patient population. However, OSs often suffer from selection bias, and may yield invalid treatment comparisons even after adjusting for known confounders. Therefore, combining information acquired from OSs with data from RCTs in research synthesis is often criticized due to the limitations of OSs. In this article, we combine randomized and non-randomized substudy data from FIRST, a recent HIV/AIDS drug trial. We develop hierarchical Bayesian approaches devised to combine data from all sources simultaneously while explicitly accounting for potential discrepancies in the sources' designs. Specifically, we describe a two-step approach combining propensity score matching and Bayesian hierarchical modeling to integrate information from non-randomized studies with data from RCTs, to an extent that depends on the estimated commensurability of the data sources. We investigate our procedure's operating characteristics via simulation. Our findings have implications for HIV/AIDS research, as well as elucidate the extent to which well-designed non-randomized studies can complement RCTs.