04/08/2024
Why Would You Want To Take Part In Clinical Trials?
Clinical trials are part of clinical research and at the heart of all medical advances. Clinical trials look at new ways to prevent, detect, or treat disease. Clinical trials can study:
- New drugs or new combinations of drugs
- New ways of doing surgery
- New medical devices
- New ways to use existing treatments
- New ways to change behaviors to improve health
The goal of clinical trials is to determine if these treatment, prevention, and behavior approaches are safe and effective. People take part in clinical trials for many reasons. Healthy volunteers say they take part to help others and to contribute to moving science forward. People with an illness or disease also take part to help others, but also to possibly receive the newest treatment and to have added (or extra) care and attention from the clinical trial staff. Clinical trials offer hope for many people and a chance to help researchers find better treatments for others in the future
09/27/2023
What are examples of clinical research?
Some examples of other kinds of research include the following:
- A long-term study that involves psychological tests or brain scans.
- A genetic study that involves blood tests but no changes in medication.
- A study of family history that involves talking to family members to learn about people's medical needs and history.
09/21/2023
What is clinical research? (by National Institute of Aging).
Clinical research is the study of health and illness in people. There are two main types of clinical research: observational studies and clinical trials.
Observational studies monitor people in normal settings. Researchers gather information from people and compare changes over time. For example, researchers may ask a group of older adults about their exercise habits and provide monthly memory tests for a year to learn how physical activity is associated with cognitive health. Observational studies do not test a medical intervention, such as a drug or device, but may help identify new treatments or prevention strategies to test in clinical trials.
Clinical trials are research studies that test a medical, surgical, or behavioral intervention in people. These trials are the primary way that researchers determine if a new form of treatment or prevention, such as a new drug, diet, or medical device (for example, a pacemaker), is safe and effective in people. Often, a clinical trial is designed to learn if a new treatment is more effective or has less harmful side effects than existing treatments.
Other aims of clinical research include:
- Testing ways to diagnose a disease early, sometimes before there are symptoms
- Finding approaches to prevent a health problem, including in people who are healthy but at increased risk of developing a disease
- Improving quality of life for people living with a life-threatening disease or chronic health problem
- Studying the role of caregivers or support groups
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