#TriviaTuesday - There are ___ main types of clinical studies.

Lupus Research Alliance

Question: There are ___ main types of clinical studies.
a. 2
b. 5

Answer: There are two main types of clinical studies: interventional studies (also called clinical trials) and observational studies.

Clinical research is the study of health and illness in people intended to add to our medical knowledge.  This type of research is done via clinical studies that involve human volunteers (or participants).  The type of clinical study design will depend on what question the researcher is trying to answer.

Interventional studies (also known as clinical trials) are studies where researchers test new ways to prevent, detect, or treat disease.  These are trials in which participants are assigned to groups that receive one or more intervention/treatment (or no intervention) so researchers can evaluate the effects of the interventions on health outcomes.   What treatment each participant receives is determined by the study’s protocol, or the written description of the clinical study, that includes the study’s objectives, design, and methods.

Observational studies, the other main type of clinical study, allow scientists to find an association between things, but they cannot prove that one thing causes another.  They can help researchers come up with a hypothesis to later test in a clinical trial.

More information about clinical trials can be found here.

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