In a single-blinded (also called single blind) clinical trial (study) of a new medication, patients receive a certain type of treatment (e.g., a pill) without the patients knowing which type of medication (e.g., is in the pill that) they are receiving. The purpose of a single-blinded clinical trial is to make the data and interpretations of the study more objective by lowering the effects of the patients’ assumptions about the medications on the symptoms and side effects that they report to the doctors and nurses.
The medications in a double-blinded clinical trial are coded, so that the doctors, nurses, and other researchers who analyze the results at the end of trial can determine:
• Which patients received which type(s) of medications
• Which effects on the disease were due to which medications
• Which side effects were due to which medications
|