Essentials Of Clinical Research Tampa Residents May Wish To Know

By Barbara Walker


Clinical research is needed to find cure for conditions that do not have a clear management protocol. It is also paramount that an alternative is provided to ensure that the conditions are put under control as cure is being sought. The aim of research is often to create a new drug, device or establish a non-pharmacological way of curing disease. There are several important concepts on clinical research tampa residents may find interesting.

Pre-clinical trials precede clinical trials in order to confirm the safety profile of a given agent before it is tried on a human being for studies. The main goal of the pre-clinical study is to come up with the appropriate dose that can be given without harming the subject under study. It includes both pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. The former determines how a drug behaves in the body, right from absorption and distribution to the time it is metabolized and excreted from the body. The latter describes the response of the agent by the human system.

In a situation where it is medical instruments under study, the above stage is skipped. Instead, the trial is taken through good laboratory practices. This stage depends on what the piece of equipment is intended for. In general, some devices are designed to help with diagnosis of disease while others are invented to replace a damaged vital part of the human system. A good example is the pacemaker device which is placed right at the center of the heart to keep it beating in rhythm. Before the device goes to the clinical phase, its effectiveness has to be ascertained.

A more recent step has been introduced to quicken the process of research. This step is simply referred to as phase zero. Only a limited number of individuals are tested. In addition, the drug administered is of levels way below the therapeutic concentration. The idea is to chaff out drug characters that have very minimal chances of being effective later in the trial and subsequently when launched into the market.

Phase one of a study entails testing certain drug concepts on a given number of individuals. These concepts include formulation type, safety and dosing levels. Two to one hundred study subjects are utilized, on average.

Individuals who are healthy are the preferred choice to be used for these studies. People living with advanced cancer are an alternative. Patients who have failed to respond to standard medication are also commonly enrolled in research programs. Ethical guidelines dictate that the individuals signing up for the research receive some financial help to offset any side effects that may occur.

The second and third phases involve a larger number of patients for testing. While phase three needs a maximum of three hundred, the following phase involves way more than this number. The goal at this stage is to study how efficient the drug in question is.

The final step is phase four which is mainly a surveillance stage. This step can be used to study additional possibilities such as the effect of certain medication in pregnant women or children. Such special groups are usually hesitant to participate in the earlier stages because of the high risk involved and can only be included after successful tests in healthy adults.




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