What are clinical trials?
All new drugs and treatments are thoroughly tested before they’re made available to patients. Following tests in a laboratory, they’re tested on people. Research studies involving testing new drugs and treatments on people are called clinical trials.
Clinical trials may test:
- new drugs that have passed safety studies,
- medical equipment,
- new combinations of current treatments, and
- different ways of giving treatments.
The goal of clinical trials is to improve treatments, quality of life and to find cures.
Why are clinical trials important to me?
Although the outcome for people with blood cancer continues to get better, there’s still a lot more to be done to improve treatments and quality of life.
Clinical trials are really important, because they’re the only way to develop new treatments – and improve existing ones – for you and other people with blood cancer. Researchers are able to compare the effects of new drugs and treatments to find out whether they work better than the current treatment used.
Clinical trials are also important to find out whether new treatments:
- are safe, and
- have side effects (and how to manage them).
If clinical trials aren’t carried out there’s a risk that people could be given treatments that don’t work and may even be harmful.
Clinical trials are divided into phases. The early phases look at the safety and the side effects of a new drug. Later phases test whether a new treatment is better than existing treatments.
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