Clinical Trials for COVID-19
Professionals from different healthcare sectors are coming up with research studies to combat the novel coronavirus. When you open your social media accounts or when you listen to the news, you will see and hear discoveries about certain medications, vitamins, therapies, and other interventions that can help us manage the disease that has crippled so many countries from different continents.
What are clinical trials?
Clinical trials are types of scientific research that involve the participation of humans to assess or evaluate the effectiveness of a certain medication, medical machinery, and health interventions. The involved participants may either be volunteers or recruited with payments.
A clinical trial can have different results. It can claim that certain treatment is effective and will create a breakthrough in the field. Contrary to that, a clinical trial can also yield a negative result. This means that the treatment that they are studying does not seem to be effective or is substandard. There are also findings that are inconclusive (more researches should be done) or non-inferior wherein the treatment is promising and although it gives the desired effect, it is just equivalent to standard treatment.
COVID-19 and Clinical Trials
As of today, there are 657 clinical studies have been recorded in ClinicalTrials.gov. Generally speaking, there are two types of clinical trials. The first one is the observational type. This is the type wherein there would be no experiments done. The investigators will simply evaluate what’s happening with their participants without manipulating any variable. Examples of this would be understanding the effects of isolated patients or those who are wearing masks.
On the other hand, interventional trials are the more aggressive type as these studies will divide participants into groups, give a particular treatment or intervention to one group, and then compare it with another group who did not receive it.
The COVID-19 clinical trials can be further classified according to the intention of the research. With the increasing number of people acquiring the virus, the World Health Organization has collaborated with different countries to come up with experimental studies to promote health. There are clinical trials that aim to identify which is the fastest, safest, and most effective way of identifying if a person is a carrier of the virus.
The majority of the interventional trials are involved in finding treatments for those who are sick. In China, for example, they have a number of experiments to check the effects of chloroquine, lopinavir, favipiravir, oseltamivir, azvudine, baloxavir marboxil, and combinations like traizavirin and basic treatment or tranilast and conventional treatment.
Medications like antimalarial, antiangiogenic, antimicrobial, antioxidants drugs are being tested to check if they could be repurposed in killing the coronavirus. Immunosuppressants, gas inhalations, modulators of the immune system, removal of cytokines, and therapies based on plasma, are also being investigated to know if they are effective in curing the illness or at least relieving the signs and symptoms.
There are, of course, certain clinical trials that are focusing on vaccines, anti-malarial drugs, anti-viral medications, and the use of personal protective equipment to protect those who are not yet infected by the virus and. These are done to prevent the virus from spreading as well.
What can we do to help?
Clinical trials are, without questions and doubt, aiming to find a solution for certain health issues such as COVID-19. If you are looking for ways on how to contribute to humanity, participating in such will surely help the situation. Be reminded that the faster we can come up with positive studies, the faster we can put a stop on this pandemic.
