Statistical advances in AIDS therapy trials

This paper reviews recent statistical advances in HIV/AIDS therapy trials. Our emphasis is on three emerging areas that address key challenges in AIDS research: the determination of optimal treatment sequences, estimating eff icacy of intended treatment, and inference for repeated measures with depen dent censoring. A common theme of these topics is the use of observational data within clinical trials to answer questions nor addressed by the conven tional intent-to-treat analysis. We also give a brief overview of some rece nt contributions to other topics relevant to AIDS clinical trials, includin g modelling of treatment compliance data, modelling of repeated measures, a nd group sequential testing.