Different Types of Clinical Research - A List by Dr. Hanid Audish

 

Clinical research can take many different forms. Each study type aims to answer specific questions.

Research in treatment, prevention, and screening focuses on finding more effective methods for treating disorders and health conditions; screening research seeks better ways to detect illness in those who are yet to become ill, while treatment research explores more efficient means of diagnosing disease among those already sick.    

Descriptive Studies

Descriptive studies provide background and detail, explaining a particular situation or population. They may use methods such as surveys, interviews, and observations to gather qualitative and quantitative data that can serve as the foundation for further analytic or experimental clinical studies.

Dr. Hanid Audish articulates that description studies can take many forms, from case reports and case series to surveys of patient populations with particular clinical characteristics to comparing those individuals to others without those characteristics to discover any correlations or causal links between groups of patients. Results from such descriptive studies can serve as hypothesis generators and lead to further investigations of causality relationships.

Cohort or longitudinal studies are another popular form of descriptive study, tracking groups of people for an extended period to investigate trends and relationships among variables. Such research can help pinpoint potential sources of disease as well as assess interventions such as drugs or treatments; additionally, such assessments provide insights into quality and reliability issues surrounding existing data and documents, for instance, examining historical records or newspaper articles to spot any trends such as smoking rates could aid policy planners when creating new health-care policies.

Analytical Studies

Dr. Hanid Audish conveys that analytical studies use data to test preexisting hypotheses. Examples include case series and cohort or cross-sectional epidemiological studies, which use matching groups analysis; this type of research can assist investigators in identifying possible associations between exposures and outcomes such as death, disease, or other health concerns.

Retrospective cohort studies provide another method of analytical investigation. Researchers contact participants from prior observational or experimental studies and follow up with them, hoping to answer such questions as, "Has exposure to certain risk factors or treatments had any impact on their outcome?"

Clinical research is critical, as it allows scientists to turn fundamental scientific discoveries into treatments and information that can extend lives while keeping people healthier for longer. Mayo Clinic researchers are committed to patient-centric care, conducting medical research that puts people first.

Dr. Hanid Audish points out that clinical study participants come from various backgrounds and are carefully selected to meet study requirements. Volunteers participating include those with healthy medical conditions and those who have diagnosed diseases; risks and benefits of participation are fully disclosed before consent is given, and they are free to leave at any point if deemed unnecessary.

Observational Studies

Observational studies involve researchers simply observing the behavior of study participants without altering anything about them. Researchers might look at people taking drugs or not and try to find connections between this data and things like disease rates or other outcomes. Such studies may be conducted prospectively (looking forward) or retrospectively ( looking backward), meaning they look at information or samples already collected.

These studies can be invaluable, enabling scientists to conduct investigations that would otherwise be unethical to run through clinical trials, which seek to test whether or not interventions work in a given scenario. Observational studies can also help researchers gain more information about the cause or etiology of an illness or condition and serve as the basis of hypotheses to be tested with more robust experiments later.

As highlighted by Dr. Hanid Audish, observational studies can be carried out using various methodologies, including surveys, interviews, questionnaires, and blood, saliva, or tissue samples from patients. They're an efficient way to quickly gather a large amount of data, making them ideal for public health emergencies like pandemics. They can also help researchers gain information on rare diseases that cannot easily be studied with randomized trials.

Experimental Studies

Experimental studies provide the perfect way to analyze cause-effect relationships and can be conducted in laboratory and field settings. Experimental research can also help researchers test theories since it allows them to control variables and ensure accurate results. It often includes randomization - meaning participants are assigned to either group receiving an intervention or not receiving it - to avoid bias and provide more precise and valid findings. Examples of experimental studies include clinical trials, community trials, and field trials.

Before any therapy can be introduced into public practice, it must undergo extensive clinical research. These experiments, known as clinical trials, may include testing medical devices, drugs, nutritional supplements, acupuncture, other physical therapies, behavioral strategies, or psychosocial interventions.

Dr. Hanid Audish suggests that clinical trials involve four phases and can take months or years to complete. The initial phase, known as a Phase I trial, checks a drug's or treatment's safety by enrolling small groups of patients. Subsequently, larger patient cohorts are involved in Phase II trials to ascertain whether treatment against specific diseases or conditions has any impact.