Clinical Trials Day
Clinical Trials Day (May 20th) is an opportunity to celebrate the central role that clinical trials play in healthcare and to acknowledge the hard work of researchers, healthcare professionals and volunteers.
All of the significant medical innovations of the 20th and 21st centuries have involved clinical trials, and so many of our clients and contacts are involved with them. Yet among the broader population, there is little recognition of their importance.
As ICR Consilium celebrates World Clinical Trials Day, here are some facts you may not know about clinical trials:
- The first known recording of a clinical trial is described in the Bible, in the Book of Daniel, where King Nebuchadnezzar ordered his subjects to consume only meat and wine in the interests of remaining strong and healthy. A small group of young men, who preferred to eat vegetables, objected and were allowed by the King to consume legumes for a 10-day period. At the conclusion of the 10-day trial the vegetable eaters appeared healthier and better nourished.
- Later, James Lind performed what is now recognised as the first controlled clinical trial in 1747 when, serving as a ship’s doctor, he required different groups of sailors to consume different diets in an attempt to identify possible treatments for scurvy. After six days, the control group eating citrus fruits was showing fewer of the tell-tale symptoms of scurvy than any of the other groups. Lind recorded in his journal that cider was the second-best scurvy treatment.
- The first recorded double-blind clinical trial was for the common cold. This was conducted by the UK’s Medical Research Council, to investigate the use of Penicillin Patulinum. This nationwide trial of over 1,000 subjects was conducted during the Second World War and was one of several unsuccessful attempts to treat the common cold.
- At least 10 clinical trials, including studies for breast cancer drug Tamoxifen and other chemotherapies, have been running for at least 10 years.
- The RECOVERY trial, the world’s largest trial for COVID-19, was a game changer for clinical trials. Using the UK’s National Health Service to recruit patients, it has recruited over 50,000 subjects since it started in 2020. It led directly to a number of groundbreaking discoveries that helped fight the pandemic, including: that hydroxychloroquine has no clinical benefits and that dexamethasone reduces deaths from COVID-19 by a third.
- The first gene therapy trial was conducted in 1990, on four-year-old Ashanti DeSilva, who suffered from severe combined immune deficiency (SCID). Ashanti is still alive today and the trial, conducted by geneticist William French Anderson, sparked a revolution in gene therapy experimentation.