Clinical Trials Of Vaccines And Drugs Flashcards
What are vaccines and drugs subject to before being licensed for use?
Clinical trials
What is the purpose of clinical trials?
Clinical trials are used to establish the safety and effectiveness of drugs before being licensed for use.
What are the 3 protocols involved in the design of clinical trials?
Randomised
Double-blind
Placebo-controlled
How does a randomised design work?
A randomised design means that the subjects in the clinical trials are divided into groups in a randomised way to reduce bias in the distribution of characteristics such as age and gender
What is the design of a double blind trial?
In a double blind trial, neither the subjects nor the researchers know which group subjects are in to prevent biased interpretation of the results
How is a placebo-control trial designed?
In a placebo controlled trial, one group of subjects receives the vaccine or drug while the other group receives a placebo-control to ensure valid comparisons
An example of a placebo-control could be a sugar pill.
What is an independent variable?
An independent variable is the one that is deliberately changed to affect the dependent variable.
What is the dependent variable?
The dependent variable is the one that is measured.
What is the effect of sample size on clinical trials?
The size of the groups needs to be of a large enough size to provide reliable results
What are error bars used for?
Error bars are used to determine whether there are any statistically significant differences between the groups.
If error bars overlap that means there is no significant difference between the control and treatment.
What are error bars in graphs?
Error bars are used to represent the standard deviation from the mean
( the distance from highest to lowest data collected from the average )
What happens at the end of the trial?
The results from two groups, which must be of a suitable size in order to reduce the magnitude of experimental error are compared to determine whether there are any statistically significant differences between the groups.
