Process of
drugs trialling
Drugs, trials, stages, human testing, efficacy, placebo, small groups, nationwide, worldwide.
Drugs trials have long been a way to find out how effective a drug can be in removing pathogens or worse from our body. We don't know how a drug will work against something until it is tested, although it doesn't come without its pros and cons.
Basically, there are a few steps to drugs trials.
One: a new drug is made, and is opened to a few people (well, up to 100, perhaps) to test out to see if there are any side effects. This helps scientists to understand what dosage will work best, and if they need to drop it lower or make it higher.
Two: a second stage of drugs testing begins based on the results of the last test. This is ongoing, as through the stages, they will base each test on the previous results. A few more (say, around 500) people are then tested with the drug. Again, notes are taken for side effects and other information they need.
During some drug trials, you may not receive the actual drug on offer. They offer a non-drug pill or capsule otherwise known as a placebo.
Three: a third or fourth stage of testing is carried out. Again, it's opened up to more people (we're looking at around 1,000), and more notes are taken of possible side effects, allergies or what it might do to you.
Four: the drug is then licensed by the medical board of the country that deems it a legal drug to use by people via prescription. It can then go on sale, or be used to treat whatever the drug has been prepared for.
By this point, and if you get the prescription, you will have a small leaflet telling you about side effects of the drug, listing all the things that could happen to you. While some are minor and seem a bit silly (headaches, belly aches, vomiting), others are more serious, with the rarest of options being death.
Even though a drug might have gone through all those trials, and be ready for the population to use, it can still undergo more trialling, which is taken over a longer period of time to make sure it is 100% safe.
Here's a YouTube video to help explain further:
Depending how well a drug takes to someone shows the efficacy of the drug itself. Different strengths will have different efficacy. As a rule of thumb, the stronger the drug is (for example, people on thyroid tablets could be on a range of 50-200mg of levothyroxine), the more effective it is. And as people vary, the different strengths will work better for some people than others. This is across the board - you can literally get different strengths of paracetamol. They are usually labelled "Extra Strength" or something similar.
Sometimes, a drug is made from synthetic materials, in a lab that is protected to the letter by white coats and gloves. While all drugs created today are treated with the same strict process, some of those drugs are made from natural resources. For example, aspirin was originally made from plants, whereas now it is made from synthetic materials in a lab.
Before we had lots of laboratories making synthetic materials for drugs (which are becoming more and more complex as the years move on), natural ingredients were used, and these ingredients are still used today for some remedies. But now, with other medication able to be bought and made for a cheaper price, the natural ingredients used in drugs are now consolidated to a more holistic method of treatment.
Another example is the most common drug we all know and use - paracetamol. It is not made naturally at all. Rather, it is synthesised in a lab, by acetylation (a chemical reaction where hydrogen atoms replace another chemical in a compound), and countries all over the world create their own paracetamol.
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