Aspects of control in clinical trials Edit

Traditionally the control in randomized controlled trials refers to studying a group of treated patients not in isolation but in comparison to other groups of patients, the control groups. who by not receiving the treatment under study give investigators important clues to the effectiveness of the treatment, its side effects, and the parameters that modify these effects.

Other aspects of control include having other members of the research team, who will typically review the test to try to remove any factors which might skew the results. For example, it is important to have a test group which is reasonably balanced for ages and sexes of the subjects (unless this is a treatment which will never be used on a particular sex or age group). Additionally, peer review and/or review by government regulators can be seen as another source of control. These bodies examine the trial results when they are presented for publication or when the drug manufacturer applies for a licence for the drug.

The importance of having a control group cannot be overstated. Merely being told that one is receiving a miraculous cure can be enough to cure a patient—even if the pill contains nothing more than sugar. Additionally, the procedure itself can produce ill effects. For example, in one study on rabbits where these subjects were receiving daily injections of a drug, it was found that they were developing cancer. If this was a result of the treatment, it would obviously be unsuitable for testing in humans. Because this result was reflected equally between the control and test groups, the source of the problem was investigated and it was shown in this case that the administration of daily injections was the cancer risk—not the drug itself.

The analysis of the trial results requires knowledge of medicine. epidemiology. and in particular statistics. The branch of statistics that deals specifically with biomedical research is biostatistics. Pharmaceutical firms employ groups of biostatisticians to try to make sense of the data. Likewise, regulators pay keen attention to the appropriateness of statistical methods used to analyze trial results.

Types of control groups Edit

Placebo concurrent control group Dose-response concurrent control group Active concurrent control group No treatment concurrent control group Historical control