arm = method?

arm = method?

Context:

Using drugs to lower blood sugar more aggressively than usual appears to increase the risk of death for diabetics who are already at unusually high risk for heart attack and stroke.

One arm of a federally funded study called is being halted early because patients receiving the extra-aggressive treatment were more likely to die than those receiving standard treatment, officials at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute said this morning.

Both groups had lower death rates than those in other studies. But the extra aggressive treatment group had three more deaths per 1,000 patients per year than the standard treatment group, which prompted a safety monitoring committee to recommend halting that arm of the study.