This is the eighth installment of our look at the increasingly high placebo response that is plaguing clinical trials in analgesia and psychiatry. Catch up on the rest of the series here. We’re now just over halfway through our Placebo Problem series. So far, we’ve examined the details of the rising placebo response, the mechanisms...
The journey to treating fibromyalgia has taken a sometimes circuitous path. After a burst of activity about a decade ago, the pursuit of new therapies took a years-long pause before reigniting in recent years. In the past five years, we’ve performed 16 fibromyalgia clinical trials (more than any other CRO), and here are some reflections...
In the early days of fibromyalgia drug research, trial site selection centered almost exclusively on rheumatologists and pain centers. But with more drugs on the market and still more studies underway, there has been significant expansion in the number of sites equipped to conduct this research. Up to a point, anyway. As fibromyalgia therapy matures,...
Children aren’t little adults: Pediatric populations have needs and physiological factors that set them apart from adults. However, it’s taken time for that philosophy to catch on within the clinical research community at large. When writing protocols for trials of acute pain in pediatric populations, researchers must take these unique needs of children into account to meet regulatory...
DURHAM, N.C., SEPTEMBER 29, 2016 — Point-in-time “landmark” analysis, the standard in most chronic pain studies, may not be appropriate for evaluating single-dose drugs. Instead, an analysis strategy similar to that used in acute-pain research may be more effective, Premier Research’s top biostatistics expert will assert in a poster presentation at the American Statistical Association’s...