Medical Research

A biological profile is a summary of the biological actions of a substance. A biological profile may come from patient data or from tests done in the laboratory or in animals. This answer is based on source information from the National Cancer Institute. Full Answer

Most people have heard of the placebo response and understand it to be a sugar pill or inert element that is given to people in order to test the efficacy of new drugs or in order to "treat" people who worry too much when there is really nothing... Full Answer

In the early stages of studying the placebo response, studies showed that about one-third of patients benefited from placebos. That is, when you gave one group of patients the active drug and another group of patients the placebo, approximately... Full Answer

The power of belief, when positive in influence, is called the placebo response. The power of belief, when negative in influence, is called the nocebo response. Negative expectations can create negative outcomes. For example, many patients... Full Answer

The MEDLINEplus health information site, run by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), explains medical terms in everyday language. If you don't understand information in your medical records or cannot remember what a prescription is for, go... Full Answer

In treatment studies (Phases II through IV), potential enrollees have the condition for which the drug or device is being tested. Sometimes the test is on an actual new drug or technique; in others an adaptation on an existing treatment (new... Full Answer

Medical treatments that we have available today are satisfactory -- but we believe that we can improve on them. The pharmaceutical or device company is betting on a big advance in disease management -- so they design and run incredibly expensive... Full Answer

Although you, your physician, and the pharmaceutical company won’t know until the end of the study which treatment you are receiving, an unaffiliated study monitor (to prevent bias) will assess your studies’ data at intervals for... Full Answer

The study consent form, which must be written in sixth-grade English rather than medicaleeze, details exactly who is eligible to participate, what the study involves, all possible risks for all test groups and of all testing (they even cover... Full Answer

Back when I was in medical school, many male students participated in "healthy volunteer" studies (aka Phase I), and made a pretty penny. These studies, only open to males, assess the metabolism of a new drug in healthy people (which explains why... Full Answer