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Table 1 Summary of key concepts

From: Alternate virtual populations elucidate the type I interferon signature predictive of the response to rituximab in rheumatoid arthritis

Term

What is it and how is it used?

Virtual Patient (VP)

Each VP has simulated clinical responses to multiple therapeutic interventions and associated pre-intervention measures, such as cell counts and synovial cytokine concentrations. 1,206 VPs were developed.

Mechanistic axes

VPs are defined by where their biology lies on the mechanistic axes. The axes introduce heterogeneity into the VPs. Axes define different VPs. Fifty-one alternate mechanistic axes were selected on the bases of sensitivity and diversity.

Axes weights

MAPEL assigns probabilities along the axes that are used to calculate the prevalence weight of each VP. The details are discussed in the methods.

Prevalence weight

A prevalence weight is the frequency of a VP relative to other VPs. The prevalence weight is used to calculate trial statistics. For example, 1 of the 1,206 virtual patients might be assigned 1% of the total weight even though it only accounts for 0.1% of the VPs. This VP’s prevalence weight would be 0.01. Note that all VPs receive a prevalence weight, based on the axes weights, although the weights will not be equal.

Virtual Population (VPop)

A single VPop is defined by one full set of prevalence weights for the VPs, e.g. one set of 1,206 prevalence weights. When the prevalence weights are applied to the simulated trial outcomes for each VP, the resulting statistics better match trial populations.