Friday, September 3, 2010

Clinical Trials- Alzheimer's Disease

This week in Biology we learned about Clinical Trials. More specifically: double- blind trials. In double- blind trials the subjects that are in the trial don't know whether they are taking the control drug or the experimental drug. The personnel giving the subjects their drugs don't know either. In the clinical trial I looked at for Alzheimer's Disease the experimental drug was called Dimebon and the control was called Placebo. That is the thing I don't like about double-blind trials. The people that have the sickness don't know whether they are taking the treatment pill or the control. The opposite side, however, is that the treatment pill could be killing people and the control is safe.  In "A Phase 3 Study To Evaluate The Safety And Tolerability Of Dimebon Patients With Mild To Moderate Alzheimer's Disease" there were two study cohorts. In Cohort 1 the patients got either Dimebon 20 mg or Placebo TID for 26 weeks. In Cohort 2 AD patients got Dimebon 20 mg or Placebo TID for 12 weeks. I think they did two Cohorts because they wanted to make sure they got accurate results. In this study you could only participate  if you were 50 years or older and had Alzheimer's. I think that double-blind trials can be effective but I don't like them very much.