I am interested in knowing if the duration of treatment has an effect on treatment with two different drugs. We have used two different drugs to treat cerebral ischemia (brain damage) and continued the treatment for 30 days. We have observed the effects in terms of behavioral scores (quantitative data) at days 1, 3, 7 15 and 30 days post treatment and are interested in knowing the following three things:
- which is the time period where drug A and drug B (two separate groups) was maximally effective
- in which time period is the difference between drug A and drug B maximal and minimal and if the difference is statistically significant (for example is the difference maximal in the period between days 3 and day 7)
- from the data can we determine that a particular drug only needs to be given for a fixed length of time (say for 15 days), as there is no significant improvement after this.
Edit: Sample data
This is not the actual data as the actual data looks a bit less fancier and may not be easy to understand the concept.
+----------+----------+----------+----------+
|Time point|Score drug|Score drug| Control|
|(days post| A| B| |
| surgery)| | | |
+----------+----------+----------+----------+
| 1| 36| 32| 44|
+----------+----------+----------+----------+
| 3| 28| 30| 42|
+----------+----------+----------+----------+
| 7| 24| 29| 38|
+----------+----------+----------+----------+
| 14| 20| 24| 32|
+----------+----------+----------+----------+
| 30| 12| 18| 25|
+----------+----------+----------+----------+
| 60| 11| 15| 19|
+----------+----------+----------+----------+
| 120| 10| 14| 17|
+----------+----------+----------+----------+
| 150| 9| 13| 15|
+----------+----------+----------+----------+
