Ursodeoxycholic Acid Improves Bilirubin but Not Albumin in Primary
Biliary Cirrhosis: Further Evidence for Nonefficacy
Figure 2
Reported and predicted levels of serum bilirubin and serum albumin for trials with short follow up period. Vertical lines represent 95% confidence intervals. In the Battezzati et al. [13] (b) and Vuoristo et al. [14] (c) trials, when compared with the placebo-treated arm, the UDCA-treated patients have a serum albumin concentration further above the expected value suggested by their bilirubin. However, in both these studies the difference between the predicted and observed results does not approach statistical significance at the 5% level. By contrast, the study by Poupon et al. [12] (a) shows that the placebo-treated patients have a mean albumin level further above their predicted level than the UDCA patients.
