Neurobiology and Immunology: Clinical Trials of Vaccines and Drugs

Question 1

What are vaccines subject to, to establish their effectiveness before being licensed for use?

Answer 1

Clinical trials

Question 2

What does the design of clinical trials of vaccines and drugs involve?

Answer 2

Randomised trials, double-blind trials and placebo-controlled trials

Question 3

Why are subjects divided into groups in a randomised way in clinical trials?

Answer 3

To reduce bias in the distribution of characteristics such as age and gender within a group

Question 4

What is a double-blind trial?

Answer 4

A trial where neither the subjects nor the researchers know which group subjects are in to prevent bias

Question 5

What happens in a trial?

Answer 5

One group receives the vaccine or drug while the second group receives a placebo control to ensure valid comparisons.

Question 6

Why should group sizes be large?

Answer 6

To reduce the experimental error and establish statistical significance

Question 7

Why are results compared?

Answer 7

To determine whether there are statistically significant differences between trial and control groups