Unit 3 KA8 - clinical trials of vaccines and drugs

Question 1

what are the three protocols in a clinical trial?

Answer 1

the placebo effect, double-blind trial, and randomised

Question 2

describe the placebo effect protocol

Answer 2

control group given a ‘dummy’ treatment to see if it improves their condition due to the psychological effect of thinking it works

Question 3

describe the double-blind trial

Answer 3

neither the subjects nor the researchers know who is being given what to eliminate bias

Question 4

describe the randomised protocol

Answer 4

subjects in clinical trials are divided into groups in a randomised way to reduce bias in the distribution of characteristics such as age and gender

Question 5

how must a clinical trial be designed in terms of the number of people and group sizes?

Answer 5

it is important that an appropriate number of people are involved in a clinical trial to increase the reliability of the results obtained
group size can help reduce experimental error and increase the statistical significance of the results

Question 6

what is the final outcome of a clinical trial?

Answer 6

the results of the clinical trials are then processed to show if there are any statistical differences between trial groups and control groups