The importance of studying history: lessons learnt from a trial of tacrolimus in myasthenia gravis

Unfortunately, as with so many previous randomised controlled trials in the MG population, the design of this randomised controlled trial was inadequate to address the question at hand. Because of the inadequacies of trial design, the negative results do not even permit the conclusion that tacrolimus is ineffective in MG. A Task Force of the MG Foundation of America recently convened for a 2 day meeting in Durham, North Carolina, in an effort to engage in critical introspection, to define and articulate lessons learnt and lessons not learnt from prior randomised controlled trials and to try to achieve consensus on a range of issues relevant to the design of future randomised controlled trials.