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Articles on Clinical trials

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Placebos have played an important part in medicine for two centuries. jared/ flickr

To understand placebo, first take it out of medicine’s black box

Placebos have a longer history than medicine as we know it, and have a huge effect on all kinds of diseases and health conditions. But it may now be time to rethink their role. The placebo made its debut…

Blood pressure reduced by radio waves

The application of radio currents can help reduce the level of blood pressure in patients with severe hypertension, according…
Learning on the job could make a real difference to healthcare. Tricia Wang

Developing countries and the MOOC learning revolution

Universities are being shaken up by a new mode of learning. The world’s elite institutions are opening up courses so thousands of people can learn for free via their laptops, mobiles or tablets. And these…
Two thirds of children with cancer are in clinical trials. Matter

New law will help drive more clinical trials for child cancers

Clinical trials provide the unbiased evidence essential for improving treatments in all areas of medicine. For children with cancer the development of safe treatments that work has relied on high quality…
The truthfulness of clinical trial data is often debatable. Image from shutterstock.com

Looking back on the chequered past of drug trials

CLINICAL TRIALS – Human clinical trials are an important last hurdle in the development of new drugs and therapies. Today, The Conversation takes a closer look at this vital scientific endeavour with three…
Ethics committees are the very bodies that ensure the safety of clinical trials. Image from shutterstock.com

Abandoning clinical trial safeguards won’t boost local industry

CLINICAL TRIALS – Human clinical trials are an important last hurdle in the development of new drugs and therapies. Today, The Conversation takes a closer look at this vital scientific endeavour with three…
Clinical trials are experimental human research studies designed to test the effectiveness of new drugs, surgical procedures or therapeutic devices. Nestlé/Flickr

Clinical trials are useful – here’s how we can ensure they stay so

From the time the Scottish physician James Lind showed citrus cured scurvy in 1747, clinical trials have had a reputation for being gold-standard evidence about the safety and effectiveness of medical…
Public confidence in medical research is vulnerable to attacks on its integrity. Andrew Huff

What Australia should do to ensure research integrity

Clinical trials of an experimental cancer drug being undertaken by the University of New South Wales were suspended this week, after questions about the accuracy of some preliminary results were made public…
The world might be a brighter place if we all shared our research. Joe Burke

China a research superpower but we could be left in dark

Over the past 25 years we have seen an explosion in top-level clinical trials in China. But only a tiny proportion of that research is available on the main databases used by doctors and researchers in…
liver cells are known for their ability to regenerate but it’s difficult to replicate in the lab. PA/Lynne Cameron

Lab-grown liver cells are a step closer to treating liver disease

The liver is a special organ. Mature liver cells - or hepatocytes - have the capacity to continually divide and repair damage. But only so far. Excessive drinking and chronic liver disease, for example…
Non-publication of clinical trial data is a waste of research resources, among other things. Esther Dyson

Register all trials, report all results – it’s long overdue

If researchers go to the effort of getting funds, recruiting patients, and following them up, you would think that they would be keen to publish the results. So it’s surprising that our best estimates…
There are many issues affecting the volume of clinical trials conducted in Australia. AAP

More work required to boost clinical trials

A new Federal Government website providing information on clinical trials has been welcomed by doctors, but they say it fails to address broader issues with clinical trials in Australia. “This website…
Headlines can scare, but media reports on new medical treatments often overstate the benefits. AAP

Sick of medical spin? Don’t just blame the media

The “spin” sometimes found in media reports emphasising the benefits of new medical treatments has more to do with the abstracts of studies published in scientific journals than misrepresentation by the…

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