Why Clinical Research Trials Are Important In The United States

In the United States, we have long put a focus on medical studies and eradicating disease. This has led to a number of great and life changing achievements. However, without the use of clinical research trials and the like, much of this advancement would have become impossible and many of the discoveries that we have made would still be in the dark. Clinical research trials have formed a foundation of medical research and led us on to bigger and better innovations than many of us could have ever dreamed of.

For instance, many conditions that were once practically a death sentence are now relatively easy to treat. Take Hepatitis C, for instance. At one point, if you contracted Hepatitis C, it was a much bigger deal than it is today. You would have to manage the condition for the rest of your life, and many people even needed a liver transplant as the disease continued to progress. Nowadays, however, this is far from the case. Those who are diagnosed with Hepatitis C need only to undergo a twelve week course of medication to fully eradicate the disease completely – in up to ninety five percent of all patients who undergo the treatment protocol as they are advised to. Clinical trials have also been hugely beneficial in cases of epilepsy studies, paid depression studies, and the like. Cancer research has also progressed significantly thanks to clinical research studies and trials. In fact, the success rate of a clinical research trial in the realm of oncology is a much as twenty percent. When compared to the less than five percent success rate with the use of oncology drugs alone (and excluding the use of other oncology treatments), this shows huge promise.

A clinical research trial is typically composed of volunteer participants who meet the certain criteria specified for the specific trial. It is absolutely crucial that every member of the clinical research trial be in full consent of the trial proceedings. In the case of a participant who is not yet a legal adult and is still a minor, a parent or legal guardian must give full informed consent. Once consent has been obtained from all participants, the trial is typically broken down into four sections: the phase 1 clinical trial, the phase 2 clinical trial, the phase 3 clinical trial, and the phase 4 clinical trial.

Each phase of the trial is focused on a different aspect. Phase 1, for instance, is typically one of the smallest phases of the trial, dwarfed by phase 2. A phase 1 clinical trial tends to focus on testing the safety of a drug or course of treatment in human use. A phase 2 clinical trial focuses on the effectiveness of the drug or treatment once safety has been established. Phase 3 of the clinical research trial revolves around large scale safety as well as effectiveness and the phase 4 clinical trial is concerned with determining long term safety.

Clinical research trials are hugely important in the United States and many other places in the entire world. Clinical trials can help to push medical innovation and advancement, finding cures and treatments for diseases that were once fatal – or needed life long management. In these ways and more, clinical research trials are an important part of the United States medical industry, always pushing forward and testing the limits of what we currently know. Medical research is key to the overall health of our country, and without it we would be in much worse shape, much worse for wear than we are now.