Clinical Trials Explained

Image of cells undergoing mitosis

A new treatment must go through many stages of testing before its benefits and risks can really be known. When potential new treatments are discovered in the laboratory, it may take many years of further research before they are given to patients routinely since it is essential to identify that the new treatment really is active and better than what is already available. If a treatment has definite potential in the final stages of development, research is carried out in patients with the particular type of illness that the treatment aims to help. These research studies are called clinical trials.

Clinical trials are the most reliable way of testing a new treatment, or of seeing whether one treatment works better than another. A new treatment does not always turn out to be better and clinical trials are therefore really important in helping to decide if one treatment is safer and more effective than another.