Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials are the gold standard for determining if a drug works—or at least if it works better than other drugs that are currently out there. These are the trials in which some people get an intervention for a condition, while similar people get a placebo, and no one (neither the patients nor the doctors) knows who is getting what. The researchers then compare how everyone has fared after a certain amount of time has elapsed.
Patients enroll in these trials to advance medical knowledge and to help future patients by identifying the most effective therapies. But in order to use those therapies, doctors need to be informed of what they are—the results of clinical trials must be disseminated. That, alas, is not really happening so much.
ClinicalTrials.gov is the US government’s repository of clinical trials. It was established in 1997 and made public in 2000. As of September 2007, the FDA stipulated that all clinical trials of drugs, biologics, and devices had to be registered on the database within three weeks of enrolling their last participants. The results of the trial had to be registered within a year after the trial’s completion.
Read 7 remaining paragraphs | Comments
No comments:
Post a Comment