What is a clinical trial?

It is a study to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of an experimental medication or an experimental medical device by monitoring their effects on large groups of people.

After testing new therapies or procedures in the laboratory and in animal studies, the experimental treatments or devices with the most promising laboratory results are moved into clinical trials. Clinical trials (also called clinical research) may be conducted by government health agencies such as NIH, researchers affiliated with a hospital or university medical program, independent researchers, or private industry. Ideas for clinical trials come from researchers or physicians.

All participants are volunteers. Participants are generally divided into two or more groups, including a control group that does not receive the experimental treatment, receives a placebo (inactive substance) instead, or receives a tried-and-true therapy for comparison purposes.

Government agencies approve or disapprove new treatments based on clinical trial results. While important and highly effective in preventing obviously harmful treatments from coming to market, clinical trials are not always perfect in discovering all side effects, particularly effects associated with long-term use and interactions between experimental drugs and other medications.

For some patients, clinical trials represent an avenue for receiving promising new therapies that would not otherwise be available. Patients with difficult to treat illness’ or currently "incurable" diseases, may want to pursue participation in clinical trials if standard therapies are not effective.

The Jones Eye Institute is now enrolling for the following clinical trials (studies):