Researchers Are Interested in Determining Whether Oral Corticosteroid Administration Is

Researchers are interested in determining whether oral corticosteroid administration is a more effective treatment for patients with multiple sclerosis exacerbation than intravenous corticosteroid administration.  They plan to conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis to compare the efficacy of these 2 treatments for acute exacerbations in this population.  The primary outcome is defined as the proportion of patients with improvement on the Expanded Disability Status Scale at 4 weeks.  The table lists the studies that meet inclusion criteria for the meta-analysis: The researchers included only studies 2, 3, and 5 in their meta-analysis.  Which of the following statements concerning the possible results of the meta-analysis is most likely true?

A) Compared with intravenous administration, oral corticosteroid administration will be significantly associated with improvement in scores on the Expanded Disability Status Scale
B) Oral corticosteroid administration will not have a statistically significant benefit over intravenous administration for treating acute relapses
C) Patients on oral corticosteroids will have 70% increased odds of improvement compared with patients on intravenous corticosteroids
D) Results may overestimate the true effect size as they are based on a biased sample of the target population of studies
E) The sample size in the meta-analysis will be too small to detect a significant difference between the 2 treatments

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