Documentation ephemerisx.com

Tutorial: Trace an FDA position across decisions

Follow the FDA's position on ARIA from its first appearance through every later anti-amyloid decision, and open each quote at its source.

Last updated September 29, 2026

In this tutorial you follow one regulatory question, how the FDA weighed and labelled ARIA (amyloid-related imaging abnormalities), across every anti-amyloid decision on alzheimers.ephemerisx.com. It takes about ten minutes.

What you will learn#

  • How to read the threads grid.
  • How to follow one thread's chain of positions.
  • How to open a quote at its page on fda.gov.

Step 1: Open the threads page#

  1. Go to alzheimers.ephemerisx.com/threads/, or select Questions in the site header.
  2. Read the legend at the top: Origin Consistent Conditional Departs Not addressed.

Step 2: Scan the ARIA row#

The threads grid with the T3 ARIA row showing Origin for Aduhelm, then Departs and Consistent pills for later decisions.
The T3 ARIA row runs across every decision.
  1. Find T3 ARIA in the grid.
  2. Read it left to right. The first decision holds the Origin. Later cells show whether each decision kept to, or moved from, an earlier position.
  3. Note any Departs pill: that is where the agency changed course.

Step 3: Follow the chain#

  1. Select T3 ARIA in the thread list. The page now shows only this thread, and the address ends in #T3.
  2. Read each step. It gives the position ID, the decision, a status pill, the agency's words and a line saying which earlier position it is compared to.
  3. Compare a Departs step with the position it names. The two quotes side by side show what changed.

Step 4: Check a quote at its source#

  1. Under any quote, find its citation, for example Approval package (reviews) · PDF p. 63 · action of Jul 6, 2023 · fda.gov ↗.
  2. Select fda.gov ↗. The FDA document opens.
  3. Go to the PDF page given in the citation (your viewer's page box, not the number printed on the page) and find the sentence.

Step 5: See the decision in context#

  1. Select the decision's name on any step to open its entry.
  2. Under What the agency said, the same position appears alongside the agency's positions on the other four threads.

Next steps#

  • Repeat with T1 Surrogate to see how the accelerated-approval basis held up.
  • On a desktop, use the command center's positions grid for the same view next to the committee votes.