It’s without question that hemp has become the new buzzword in the health and wellness industry. Since its legalization in the US, many entrepreneurs and investors have been flocking to get their piece of the pie.
Farmers are also either making a switch from their regular crops to growing hemp or creating more space to cultivate hemp on their land. With all the hype surrounding hemp and hemp oil/CBD, it comes as no surprise that the science community is also looking into hemp very closely. In fact, it was the initial clinical trials on hemp that revealed its health benefits, especially for the treatment of severe pain and epilepsy.
Thanks to these initial trials, doctors are now freely recommending hemp-infused products to their patients for the treatment of epileptic seizures or the pain that’s associated with chemotherapy. While savvy researchers and scientists are the reason why hemp has been finally legalized in the US, not much is known about these clinical studies.
While they are incredibly important in not only determining the safety and wellbeing of those who use them, but also in deciding the law, here’s some useful information on clinical studies.
What Is A Clinical Study?
A clinical study, also known as a research study, is a type of study which involves the use of human volunteers to participate in a clinical trial process. Each clinical study has its own protocol or a written description of the clinical study and what will be required from the participants. The protocol mainly includes the objectives of the clinical study, design, and the methods that will be used in the clinical study, along with relevant scientific background information or statistics.
The primary purpose of a clinical study is oftentimes to evaluate either one or more treatment interventions for treating a specific ailment or disease. Other purposes of a clinical study may include protocols that have been designed to assess interventions that are aimed for the diagnosis or prevention of a specific disease or medical condition.
All protocols are designed to examine the basic mechanism of action of the intervention when it comes to its physiology and biomechanics and how the participants respond to the intervention.
Results Of A Clinical Study
Whenever the results of a clinical study have been posted, the study results page will include participant flow, baseline characteristics, outcome measures, adverse events, statistical analysis, and administrative methods. In case of medical professionals reviewing a clinical study, the first thing that must be determined is whether or not the participants who were part of the study were representative of the patients that a clinician sees in their practice. Did the participants have any prior illness or disease? What was the duration of the illness or disease? Duration of the clinical study? Number of participants? And more importantly, who is carrying out the clinical study, and what are their credentials. If you’re interested, The National Institutes of Health provides a web-based database of all the clinical trials that are conducted around the world.