In a 28-week study of Alzheimer's patients, 250 were in a randomized trial to memantine or placebo.
CNN: Better understanding of dementia leading to more effective therapies
Then when a randomized trial showed that hormonal replacement therapy actually raised the early risk of heart attack, women were understandably upset.
FORBES: Why No Uproar Over Ovarian Cancer Screening Guidelines?
But sometimes, non-experimental evidence is so striking that conducting a randomized trial withholding the new intervention from half of an experimental population feels immoral.
The latest study, a randomized trial of 80 women and men published in Plos One by Harvard researchers, shows that even when clinicians told women with irritable bowel syndrome they are getting fake pills, the fake pills still worked.
FORBES: Sugar Pills Work Even When People Know They Are Fake
The treatment was common until a randomized controlled trial proved it was actually harming women.
The Cambridge group will begin a randomized controlled trial next month with 104 children involved, similar to the peanut study done already, but with controls, said researcher Dr. Andrew Clark of Cambridge University Hospitals.
But the RAND study side-stepped these problems by using the gold standard of scientific evidence a randomized controlled trial, just like those that the FDA relies on to provide definitive scientific evidence regarding the efficacy and safety of pharmaceuticals.
Because the Framingham Heart Study is not a randomized controlled trial, it's still not clear if vitamin D is the real reason for the link (the vitamin's levels could drop in unhealthy people for other reasons), or if taking a supplement would lower the risk.
But I think that before embarking on a large randomized controlled trial he first needs to demonstrate that such a trial would even be feasible.
But surgery sometimes goes mainstream without ever being evaluated in a randomized, controlled trial.
Obviously, these findings are hypothesis-generating only and will have to be tested in a prospective, randomized trial.
He currently is recruiting post-stroke patients for a randomized, controlled trial comparing error-type treatment to intensive treadmill training.
Patients are now being recruited into a randomized, multicenter trial--the kind that the FDA demands before a drug can be approved.
More substantial and convincing support for such a recommendation to eat cherries as a way to reduce gout flares would ideally emerge from a randomized controlled clinical trial.
The results are the first from a major randomized clinical trial to indicate that treating an HIV-infected individual can reduce the risk of sexual transmission of HIV to an uninfected partner.
FORBES: Could AIDS Disappear If Enough Patients Get Treated?
"I don't think there is sufficient evidence to justify a widespread change to six-times-a-week dialysis, " says Stanford University nephrologist Glenn Chertow, who is running a big, randomized trial on more frequent in-center treatment.
For one, the groups noted the analysis is a retrospective study, not a prospective, randomized controlled clinical trial, which many regard as a gold standard for ferreting out safety concerns.
FORBES: The Confusion Over A Pair Of Diabetes Drugs And Pancreatitis
But a related Abbott drug, TriCor, failed to prove its benefits in a large randomized controlled clinical trial.
FORBES: Why Merck's Niacin Failure Will Scare Drug Researchers
The investigators are now conducting a randomized, controlled clinical trial of RAGE Control in the outpatient clinic at Boston Children's that adds a cooperative component.
ENGADGET: Researchers create video game that monitors heart rate to keep children's anger in check
In the accepted hierarchy of evidence generation, the results of a randomized, controlled clinical trial usually take precedence over other forms of evidence such as meta-analysis and observational studies.
FORBES: Glaxo Alleges Errors In Nissen's Critique Of FDA's Handling Of Avandia
In addition to his many papers exploring the basic science of the renin-angiotensin system, Matsubara was the chief investigator of the KYOTO HEART Study, a randomized, open-labeled trial studying the add-on effect of valsartan to conventional therapy in high-risk hypertension.
FORBES: Two Retractions For Embattled Chief Investigator Of Kyoto Heart Study
It is because the government-funded trial was a placebo-controlled, double-blind, randomized controlled trial.
The gold standard for testing medical treatments is the randomized trial, in which patients are randomly assigned to a treatment or control group to spread patient differences evenly and avoid bias in results.
WSJ: Heart Bypass Surgery May Offer Lower Death Risk Than Angioplasty
The trial showed that patients randomized to chelation therapy had a lower risk of a combined endpoint of death, heart attack, stroke, percutaneous coronary intervention, bypass surgery or hospitalization for angina than those who received a placebo infusion.
FORBES: Researchers Who Ran Controversial Chelation Trial Respond to Questions
In the double-blind, randomized control trial, half the women got tenofovir gel and half got a placebo.
In healthcare, our gold standard for good evidence is the randomized controlled trial, in which, for example, half the patients receive a new drug and half receive a placebo.
Dr. Lack is in the midst of the much-anticipated, randomized controlled trial in the U.K., which is following 640 children with a high risk of allergy determined by eczema from infancy to the age of 5.
WSJ: Food Allergy Advice for Parents: Start Peanuts, Eggs and More Sooner
The authors noted that there has never been a controlled clinical trial of parachutes, and facetiously suggested that one be conducted in which subjects were randomized to jump from a plane either with or without a device.
应用推荐