Taking part in a clinical trial

What are the potential benefits of taking part in a clinical trial?

There are so many benefits to taking part in a clinical trial. Your participation may help others get a better treatment for their disease in the future and allow researchers to learn more about how diseases can be prevented, identified, or managed. If you’ve always wanted to Contribute to Health Research, now is the perfect time to do so!

If the treatment being studied is more effective than the standard treatment, you may be among the first to benefit. Researchers, doctors, and other health care professionals may check your physical condition frequently, giving you regular, careful medical attention, because they need data to make comparisons in a trial. This means that if they do find anything wrong with you, they’ll be able to treat you quickly and efficiently.

It may be a way to get an experimental treatment for a life threatening illness that is not available to people outside of a clinical trial. This is a huge advantage of taking part in a clinical trial, particularly if you are of ill health. For example, if you suffer from cancer, you may be given a drug that can help with the symptoms during your clinical trial.

These are some possible risks of taking part in a clinical trial:
You may experience serious, unpleasant, or even life-threatening side effects.
You may get the standard treatment or placebo instead of the experimental product.
The experimental product may not be better or even as good as the standard treatment for your condition.
You may need extra tests. Some of the tests could be uncomfortable or time consuming.