phase III trial


phase III trial

, phase 3 trialA clinical trial to explore the clinical use of a new drug, esp. relative to other known effective agents (the current standard of care). These trials often include thousands of enrollee patients. By law, all such patients receive real treatment; no placebos are given. But the trial is usually double-blinded, with patients divided randomly into two groups: an experimental group and a control group on standard treatment, with neither patients nor researchers knowing to which group the patient belongs. See also: trial