This week we learned multiple types of clinical study, Retrospective, Blinded, Randomized, etc. Research a clinical study you are interested in and describe which type of clinical study it is.
This week we learned multiple types of clinical study, Retrospective, Blinded, Randomized, etc. Research a clinical study you are interested in and describe which type of clinical study it is.
I am interested in retrospective studies. Retrospective studies is defined as "A retrospective study uses existing data that have been recorded for reasons other than research. A retrospective case series is the description of a group of cases with a new or unusual disease or treatment." As a data enthusiast, I like analyzing past data and finding different correlations between variables I could be looking for. Retrospective studies are beneficial in ways that gives researchers a chance of comparing a wide range of variables through the use of multiple studies.
I am interested in triple blind studies because I believe this is the best method to get unbiased and accurate results from a study. A triple blind study is a version of blinded studies, in which the patient, doctor, and scientist all do not know which group has the actual treatment and which one has the placebo. By ensuring that everyone directly involved in the clinical trial is unaware of who is getting the actual drug the data being collected is most likely the closest to unbiased it can get. I prefer this over double blind studies because in triple blind the person actually taking the data is not aware who has the placebo. Through this each stage of the clinical trial is completely insulated from personal feelings and bias.
A clinical study I was interested in after this weeks lectures is a double-blind study. A double-blind study is when both the doctor is unaware of what the patient is receiving, whether it is actual treatment or a placebo, and the patient does not know what they are receiving. After doing some research a double-blind study I came across was a double-blind study on electrosleep therapy on patients with chronic (more than 2 years) psychiatric illness unresponsive to current treatment modalities. Patients were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Group I patients received 10 active electrosleep treatments followed by 10 sham treatments over a 4-week period. Group II patients oppositely received 10 sham treatments followed by 10 active electrosleep treatments over the same 4-week period. Doctors working with the patients were not aware of which patients were getting the active electrosleep therapy. In conclusion, the study was a small sample size which is often a disadvantage of double-blind studies, but overall this study was a good example of a double-study following this weeks lectures.
I think I am interested in prospective, double-blind research as this type of research is more likely to have a higher level of evidence and be more trustworthy as a body of data with scientific validity.
Randomized clinical studies are those in which the participants are divided by chance into separate groups that compare different treatments or other interventions. Using chance to divide people into groups means that the groups will be similar and that the effects of the treatments they receive can be compared more fairly. At the time of the trial, it is not known which treatment is best. Randomized controlled trials are prospective studies that measure the effectiveness of a new intervention or treatment. Although no study is likely to prove causality, randomization reduces bias and provides a rigorous tool to examine cause-effect relationships between an intervention and outcome. The act of randomization balances participant characteristics between the groups allowing attribution of any differences in outcome to the study intervention. This is not possible with any other study design.
Clinical trials and observational studies are the two major categories of clinical research. A study's techniques and procedures for gathering and analyzing data are referred to as its study designs. I would like to run a case-control study design.
Case-control studies don't track participants over time; they start with the results. Researchers pick participants with a specific outcome, then conduct interviews with the groups or review their records to learn about the various experiences they underwent. They contrast the chances of experiencing the result with the chances of experiencing it without.
These studies take a retrospective approach. Although it is generally not advisable to make causal claims, a retrospective study design enables the researcher to develop hypotheses about potential associations and explore potential relationships.
I am interested in Alzheimer's disease research and read a very interesting article for my molecular biology class about researchers using computational identification to find genes that may be associated with the regulation of Alzheimer's gene expression with the future application of using them as targets for drug therapies to treat the disease. The type of study conducted in this article was a retrospective study, specifically a meta-analysis in which the researchers searched databases for studies in which gene expression data was available for Alzheimer's patients. Even though this study was a retrospective study, I am more interested in prospective studies, mainly randomized, double blind clinical trials. I am very interested in drug development and would love to one day work on a clinical trial either as a principle investigator or monitor.
I am interested in studying the blind clinical study. A blind clinical study can be either single-blinded or double-blinded. This study is where a specific party does not know if they are receiving the actual drug or a placebo. A single-blind study is where the patient does not know, and a double-blind study is where the patient and the doctor are unaware of which are given. I am more interested in studying a single-blind study because I would like to assess the outcome of the patients that may think they have the actual drug, but they do not.
I am interested in retrospective study. I think I would enjoy looking back at archived data and reports to study a disease. Retrospective studies use existing data to compare the demographics of a disease. I would be interested in analyzing data to discover patterns, causes, or relative risks of the outcome. I would like to do a retrospective study on the rates of cancer in communities neighboring environmental hazards. There are some obstacles that I would encounter in retrospective studies. There is a chance that data will be missing and new patients will not be enrolled in the study. Nevertheless, I think retrospective studies can propel the future of clinical research.
