Who Can Participate in a Clinical Trial?
All children and adults can participate in a clinical trial if they meet the required inclusion/exclusion criteria for a particular study. Every clinical trial uses inclusion/exclusion to determine if a participant is eligible to enroll in the study.
These criteria often include:
- Gender
- Age
- Whether a patient is newly diagnosed versus recurrent diagnosis
- Current and past treatment
Volunteers may choose to participate in a clinical trial for two main reasons:
Healthy Volunteers: these participants join a clinical trial in order to test new medications, devices and/or prevention efforts. Clinical trials that request/require healthy volunteers are not meant to provide direct health benefits to the volunteers, but rather, to advance scientific knowledge and treatment of a particular medical condition. Some of these studies do pose some level of risk for patients and can sometimes cause discomfort. Enrolling in these trials includes a consent process, which allows the volunteer to have a detailed discussion regarding any potential risks, harm and benefits that may result from enrollment in the trial.
Patient Volunteers: these participants join a clinical trial in order to test new medications, procedures and/or treatment options that may directly benefit a particular diagnosis. Clinical trials involving patient volunteers (CERN’s clinical trials are created for patient volunteers) are used to better understand a particular diagnosis and provide evidence through scientific measures “the effects and limitations of the experimental drug.” Often times these clinical trials use a placebo or a dosage large enough only to show or further prove the effectiveness and limitations of that particular drug.