Clinical Studies: How do They Contribute to The Future of Medicine?

 Medicine  

Medical clinical trials with human participants start with a small group and then expand to a larger group of people before a new treatment is approved. Here is some information on the process that is commonplace for all our medication and medical procedures.

Clinical trials are one of the final stages of development for medical innovations before they can be used on the general public. Clinical trials involving humans are necessary because our bodies does not always react the same way to medical treatments as animals do, although animal studies are conducted first to attempt to determine if the treatment will be harmful.

Trials with human participants start with a small group and then expand to a larger group of people before a new treatment is approved. Here we will explore the process that is commonplace for all our medication and medical procedures.

Basic Clinical Trial Groups

For a study to be effective, there must be both a treatment group, who receives the new treatment, and a control group, who does not, so the groups can be compared. Clinical trials either show that the new medical advancement improves patient outcomes, causes harm to patients, or has no effect at all.

The first phase of a clinical trial determines if a treatment is safe. The second phase determines if the treatment is effective, while the third phase determines if the treatment is more effective or has fewer side effects than currently available treatments for the same condition.

History of Clinical Trials

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The idea behind a clinical trial has been around for thousands of years. The Book of Daniel, found in the Old Testament of the Bible and believed to have been written between 167 and 164 B.C., describes an experiment in which one group of participants ate the “King's meat” for a period of time while the other group did not. The Persian physician Avicenna gave similar advice during the 11th century.

More recently, Lady Montagu gave condemned men a prototype of the smallpox vaccination in exchange for their lives, although her experiment did not contain a control group. The inventor of the smallpox vaccine, Edward Jenner, also tested the efficacy of his vaccine on the eight-year-old son of his gardener, but his experiment was also flawed by modern standards.

Development of New Treatments

Clinical trials are essential to the development of new treatments. Without them, there could be no advancements in the field of medicine. If new treatments were developed, they may be ineffective or harmful without the information learned from clinical trials. Participants of a clinical study involving an investigatory treatment can be assured that they are contributing to the future of medicine and possibly helping to improve the outcome of others with the same medical condition in the future.

In addition to benefiting the field of medicine, clinical trial participants also receive expert medical care and cutting-edge treatments, often at a reduced cost. For example, some studies even compensate participants for their time and travel expenses like this modern bunion removal study in Utah. These, and other, incentives lead many willing participants to participate in studies for the betterment of mankind. Preliminary clinical trials are an effective method to determine if a drug or procedure should be available to the public.

By Meghan Belnap

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