Rationale, Design and Early Trial Performance of AOSpine North America Multi-Center Double Blind Randomized Controlled Trial of Safety and Efficacy of Riluzole in CSM (CSM – Protect Trial)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Introduction While surgical decompression is an effective treatment for CSM, many patients have substantial residual neurological and functional impairment. Compelling evidence from preclinical models suggest a benefit of adding a neuroprotective drug which targets sodium/glutamate excitotoxicity to the treatment of patients with CSM. The purpose of this study is to evaluate efficacy and safety of sodium-glutamate antagonist riluzole in improving neurological outcomes in patients with cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM) undergoing surgical treatment. Material and Methods Prospective multi-center double-blind randomized controlled trial in which a total of 300 patients undergoing surgical decompression for CSM will be randomized 1:1 to riluzole 2x50mg daily for 14 days before the surgery and 28 days after the surgery or to the placebo. Primary outcome measure is change in mJOA between baseline and 6 months. Secondary outcomes include ASIA, SF36v2, NDI, Eq. 5D, Pain VAS and complications. The sample size of 270 completed subjects will have 80% power to detect absolute difference of 0.9 in mJOA score between the investigational and the control group. The statistical analysis is organized as a sequential adaptive trial with one interim analysis at 65% of the accrued sample for early futility and efficacy. Adaptive statistical design allows for sample size adjustment at the time of interim analysis. Results To date, 212 subjects have been enrolled. Average age of the enrolled subjects is 58.1 years (SD 10.2); 56% males. The baseline mJOA is 11.9 (SD 1.5). Baseline NDI is 42.5 (SD 20.4) and the baseline SF36v2 Physical Component Score (PCS) is 32.8 (SD 9.9). Conclusion In spite of the benefits of the surgical intervention, patients with CSM experience significant residual impairment and neurological compromise. Adding neuroprotective treatment with riluzole may improve outcomes of surgery. This talk will emphasize the unique study design and the biological rationale for considering riluzole as a potential neuroprotective adjunct for patients undergoing surgery for CSM
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.069 | 0.043 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.007 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.007 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.029 | 0.008 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".