If you or your loved one has been diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis (AS), here’s the latest down and dirty news from a clinical trial that matters—cause nobody wants to read through reams of stuff to get to the bottom line:

Down and Dirty AS Clinical Trial News at a Glance:

Background: For years, scientists believed that people who took a type of NSAIDS regularly (long-term) as prescribed, had less AS disease progression/worsening of symptoms than people who just took NSAIDs when they actually needed to for pain, stiffness, and swelling.

But not so fast! Check out this doctor’s big brains!

Dr. Joachim Sieper, from the Charité University Medicine in Berlin, Germany, who headed a 2-year randomized controlled study of 167 patients for ankylosing spondylitis treatment from May 2008 to December 2013, actually observed more AS progression in patients who were receiving continuous diclofenac, which is a type of NSAID. The only catch, though, reported in the Annals of the Rheumatic Disease, was that some of his findings may not have been statistically significant. Hmm…awkward.

And when it comes to an ankylosing spondylitis treatment, there is no room for less than stellar statistical significance.

A Dare for Nerds: If you want to read the actual abstract, get your big brains on and feast on this.

The bottom line? Well, you don’t need big brains to see that because of the way the study was conducted, it’s not possible to really draw any firm conclusions. It seems there may have been challenges with some of the arms of the study. Dr. Sieper basically says their data should stimulate future research about the effects of NSAIDS on new bone formation.

We’ll leave it up to you to decide if the study was a flip or flop. Whatcha think, nerds? Any takers?!

Pass this along using a social button below and let’s see what others think!