Is a clinical trial right for me?

Clinical trials are studies of promising new or experimental treatments that may be beneficial to patients. Clinical trials must go through three phases to obtain FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approval. The first phase study finds the best way to give a new treatment and tests the safety of the drug. Phase II studies are designed to see if the drug works. And phase III involves testing large numbers of patients where one group (the control group) receives the standard treatment and the other group receives the new treatment. Participants in clinical trials have a team of experts caring for them and monitoring their progress, but they do not know whether the treatment will work and what the side effects may be.