From Deseret News archives:
Clinical trials are driven by hope
But studies are complex, face ethical, safety issues
Miles and a different diagnosis away, Judy Grant feels like she's in the happy part of the movie "Awakenings." She was, she said, "experiencing the world in a very ghostly way" because of chronic fatigue, an illness that left her so drained she had to force herself to get up and shower a couple of times a week, resting her head against the shower wall two or three times "just to get through it." Now the colors, the vibrancy, the zest have returned.
The difference, both say, was strict adherence to their treatment plan and participation in a clinical study just one of the steps an experimental drug must make on its way from being a notion that something might help to becoming a treatment you buy at the pharmacy or a better medical device or new surgical technique.
On any given day in the United States, experts estimate there are nearly 50,000 ongoing clinical studies. At Huntsman Cancer Institute alone, 86 different treatment variations are being examined. Type any medical condition into the search engine at www.clinicaltrials.gov, the National Institute of Health's database, and you're apt to find something hopeful that's being studied.
Patients can access many of those studies without leaving Utah, through hospitals, private physicians, research companies.
The trials may be sponsored by organizations or individuals such as physicians, medical institutes, foundations, pharmaceutical companies, federal health agencies and others. Increasingly, large national groups dedicated to promoting research of a specific illness are helping fund studies of potential treatments.
Should I?
"Clinical trials are the way we determine what works in treating patients," said Dr. Stephen Prescott, executive director of the Huntsman Cancer Institute. "The medications we have to treat diseases of all types all come from applying a scientific method of asking 'Does this treatment work?' "
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A little after midnight Wednesday morning, about 21 hours ago as I write...
There's a lot of reason to leave your plastic home as you shop:
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it would be awsome to watch !! a match made in in EGO-HEAVEN
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until you play the Utes this weekend. Then it will only be fun for the Utes D.
lighten up. do you not have any humor? good article.
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