what does it mean to be blinded or double blinded on a clinical trial?

[Music] What does it mean to be blinded or double-blinded on a clinical trial? Blinding on a clinical trial is when a patient does not know what particular treatment they are on. Double blinded trials are very interesting because the patient and the physician do not know what trial drug the patient will have received. Usually those are going to be in phase four, those are going to be in phase three trials. So in a phase three trial where you're getting drug X plus standard of care, let's say people can be influenced if they know they're on the new drug, they may attribute certain side effects to the drug that they may have gotten anyway. They may think they have more headaches and they may attribute it to the drug, but it may have nothing to do with the drug. So you get better data if you blind people to it and often blind the investigators, because the investigators will often ascribe symptoms to an experimental drug if they know the patients getting it. That's why in a lot of trials, placebos are important. You'll get a placebo pill and the investigator and the patient, neither one knows they're getting. And the only people that know is a central area. And so it doesn't impact how you report side effect profile or response rates. And so that's that's again, that helps with the data be even more pure and more accurate. In cancer trials placebos are given in addition to the standard of care treatment. Placebos are never given alone unless the standard of care is no treatments. Thanks for watching. By creating a health tree account, you can get exclusive access to the latest Health Tree University content. Track your course progress, take quizzes and bookmark lessons. Visit the links in the description below to get started. [Music]