How to Find the Best Trial for You on ClinicalTrials.gov

How to Find the Best Trial for You on ClinicalTrials.gov

Are you looking to participate in a clinical trial? Perhaps you have attempted to use the clinicaltrials.gov website and have found it overwhelming. 

Clinicaltrials.gov is by the National Library of Medicine which makes it the most recommended site when it comes to browsing for clinical trials. However, it is not the most user friendly and it can be a bit cumbersome especially since filters use wording that only people in clinical research would understand. 

We at TheClinResearcher.com have created the guide below which we hope will help you in your search for the right clinical trial! We are here to simplify the process and help you along the way! 

Step 1: Head over to clinicaltrials.gov, the largest repository of clinical trials worldwide. 

Step 2: Use the filters to narrow down your search, below is an explanation for each of the fields to help guide you! 

• Condition or disease:
  • For this field you can type in the diagnosis you are interested in searching for.
    • Some examples may be:
      • Hypertension
      • Anxiety 
      • Weight loss 
      • Depression 
  • Other terms:
    • We recommend you leave this blank, but if you would like to you can include the name of the drug if you are looking for a specific trial. 
• Intervention or treatment:
  • This is where you can select if you would like to search for a trial that is using a device, medication, procedure, or vaccine. There are also non-invasive interventions which means you may trial a diet or exercise. 
• Location:
  • In this section you can enter your preferred location for where the clinical trial is being done. Remember that clinical trials may have multiple visits and take months to complete. We recommend using your location to find nearby clinical trials. 
• Study Status
  • For study status, this section will have two options, “All studies” and “Recruiting and not yet recruiting studies”
    • If you are looking to participate in a clinical study, you should select the “Recruiting and not yet recruiting studies” option. As “All studies” may give you trials that have already closed 

Optional: If you would like to narrow down your search even more continue through the following steps!  

Step 3: Select the More filters option 

Step 4: Eligibility Criteria 

• Here you can enter more of your information to find a trial that is best suited to what you are looking for.
  • Enter your sex and age since there are trials that may only be accepting a specific demographic. 
• Accepts healthy volunteers:
  • What do they mean by healthy volunteers?
    • Clinical trials, usually in their early phases, need participants who are healthy and do not have any medical conditions. 

Step 5: Study Phase 

• In this field you will be asked to select a phase from Phase I to Phase 4, or “Not applicable”. 
• We have a resource article here that covers the phases in clinical research and why they are important to know what they are before signing up for a trial. 

Step 6: Study Type

• This section is important since it can help you narrow down the type of clinical trial you are looking to enroll into. 
• The most important options in this section are whether you would like to filter for interventional or observational trials.
  • Interventional : the clinical trial is studying a specific medication, device, vaccine, diagnostic tool etc. 
  • Observational : these are clinical trials that measure changes without “intervening”. These studies may involve measuring the effects of a specific diet or exercise.
    • A patient registry is a type of clinical trial that is observational in nature. These trials register patients and observe the long term effects of a disease. Patient registries are helpful in order to learn about disease progression and can sometimes lead to interventional studies in the future. 

Even though there are additional filters, we recommend you leave them blank as they will need for you to put in details that you might not have available to you. If you are looking for a specific trial and know the information in these filters you can fill them out as well. But for now, you have entered the necessary information to start searching for the right trial! 

Step 7: Browse the search results

• Once you click on search after selecting all of your filters, a list of search results for will appear for your criteria. 
• The sidebar will have a list of additional filters that you can use to save time while browsing for clinical trials. 
• Study status is one of the most important filters you can use as this will show you only the trials that are enrolling if you select “Recruiting”. 

Step 8: Enrolling into a trial 

Once you select a trial, you should read through all of the information provided by the study team. You will want to do this to gain a better understanding of what the trial is about and if you may qualify based on its inclusion and exclusion criteria. 

If you would like to move forward with the clinical trial, you will have to reach out via phone or Email to one or both of the study contacts listed on the page. Above is just one example of a contact section for a trial however, the trial you are interested in enrolling into will have a similar section. 

Wrapping up 

To wrap up, we hope you were able to find the right clinical trial and that you are successful in contacting the site to enroll. 

At TheClinResearcher.com we understand how difficult and time consuming it can be to find the best clinical trial to participate in. There are not a lot of resources relating to how to get started in clinical trials. That’s where we come in! 

We highly recommend you sign up for our Newsletter to get our exclusive free guide to getting started in clinical trials. You will be kept up to date on everything clinical trials so that you will feel empowered to make an informed decision!