From diabetes clinical trials to a psg sleep study, clinical trials are an important part of the medical world – and our world as a whole. Without clinical trials such as diabetes clinical trials, we would be without a considerable amount of the medical advancements that we have made in recent years. Take Hepatitis C for example. Hepatitis C was once considered to be a terminal conditions eventually resulting in death, but can now be cured with a course of a twelve week drug treatment in as many as ninety five percent of patients. This breakthrough in the treatment of Hepatitis C originated from a drug trial. Without access to clinical trials, Hepatitis C would likely still require life long treatment and, in many cases, the eventual need for a liver transplant.

Though many look at the pharmaceutical industry with at least some degree of skepticism, the pharmaceutical industry has been instrumental in the advancement of the medical world, contributing to breakthroughs and overall steps forward in various medical branches through the implementation of diabetes clinical trials and the like. In fact, by 2017 the pharmaceutical industry had spent nearly one hundred and fifty billion dollars on research and development alone, and the market worth of the pharmaceutical industry is expected to grow to a worth of more than one trillion by 2020, just two short years from now. But the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t just provide money for medical research – nearly half of the eleven main clinical research organizations in the United States are pharmaceutical companies themselves, who often conduct clinical trials such as diabetes clinical trials to test out new treatments, particularly drug treatments.

From diabetes clinical trials to alzheimers research studies, clinical trials are usually broken down into three stages. Phase 1 clinical trials are geared at testing the safety of the drug or the treatment for humans. Phase 2 clinical trials, which are typically larger than a phase 1 clinical trial, tests the drug’s effectiveness in its intended purpose. This stage of any clinical trial is often the longest, and can last as long as two years before moving on to the third phase. A phase 3 clinical trial is focused on testing large scale effectiveness and phase 4, the final stage of any clinical trial, is used for testing long term safety and side effects. It is important, in any stage of a trial, that all participants and volunteers give their full and willing consent. In the case of children who are participating in a clinical trial or research study, informed consent must be given by a parent or even a legal guardian.

Clinical trials such as diabetes clinical trials have been proven to be hugely beneficial to our society as a whole. With more than one hundred over the counter medications currently available in the United States today, clinical trials have provided us with access to the drugs and treatments that have made a number of diseases treatable and even beatable. Take for example cancer patients and clinical trials for cancer. A clinical trial geared towards cancer research can have a success rate of more than twenty percent, if oncology treatments are excluded. For many cancer patients, especially for those who have been labeled as terminal, the chance to participate in a cancer based clinical trial can be a new breath of hope, providing many with a longer life and a higher quality of that life than they would have otherwise been able to have. Clinical trials have changed the medical field and the world for the better.