Epilepsy Talk

Clinical Trials — International Database | August 20, 2012

There’s a new treasure trove of clinical trials information now available as a free service of the National Institutes of Health, developed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM).

ClinicalTrials.gov is a web-based resource that provides patients, family members, health care professionals, researchers, and the public with easy access to information on publicly and privately supported clinical studies on a wide range of diseases and conditions.

Presently, there are 131,167 studies with locations in 179 countries, including the U.S. Studies are easy to search for by topic and location. You can even search by the intervention itself.

For example, if you search “Epilepsy Philadelphia,” you can find places that are recruiting, active, completed and completed with results. And for those studies that are completed with results, you can download the outcome of the study.

Trials may be for medical products such as drugs or devices, procedures, or changes to participants’ behavior, for example, diet. Clinical trials may also compare a new medical approach to a standard one that is already available.

For full information, go to:  http://clinicaltrials.gov/beta/home