Clinical Trials Recruiting Section

Abstract

Thanks to advances in basic and translational neuroscience over the last few decades, neurology is gradually shifting from a past of therapeutic nihilism toward an era of experimental therapeutics. While we are still a long way from the goal of a treatment or a trial for every patient, major progress has been made in identifying potentially therapeutic agents based on more thorough understanding of relevant disease processes. The next steps include evaluating the treatment’s safety, appropriate dosing, and finally, ensuring efficacy in well-designed controlled trials. Completion of these steps requires establishing patient selection criteria, optimal study designs, and informative primary and secondary endpoints. Investigators often spend years addressing these complex issues during study planning and the iterative processes required to obtain research funding and regulatory approvals. After clearing those hurdles, the next problem is often patient recruitment. This issue of Neurology introduces a new Clinical Trials Recruiting Section designed to help address this concern. The Association of Clinical Research Professionals (www.acrpnet.org) estimates that 80% of clinical trials have problems in recruitment that delay or even prevent their completion. Reasons for this include patient concerns about risks and a tendency for investigators …