what is a clinical trial in the context of HIV/AIDS?

Question

'Clinical trial' is often mentioned in HIV/AIDS prevention studies. You will also find mentions of terms like: clinical management of STI (sexually transmitted infecions) and HIV.

Answer 1

A clinical trial is a special kind of research performed to test a new or experiemental drug or therapy on a population.

In terms of HIV, to run a clinical trial, the researchers recruit a group of HIV positive patients. The researchers will randomly assign trial participants to either the experimental therapy or the gold-standard therapy as placebo (contrary to popular belief, placebo is NEVER no treatment in such trials). The randomization process of choice is called double-blind randomized trial, meaning the neither patient nor the research observer knows what the patient is taking (that info is codified as an ID number).

So if AZT is standard treatment for a certain profile of patients, and this clinical trial wants to test Drug X, some patients will get AZT, the others will get Drug X. Then the object of the trial is to measure if Drug X performs better than AZT.

Answer 2

That means that whoever's site you are at have medication, for example, that needs further study before it's made public. This test drug if for the prevention of hiv. Or whatever you fill in. Like, hepatitis C, Parkinson's Disease, etc.

Answer 3

they would all possibly be different. that's what trials usual are.