How can you take part in a trial?

At the moment there is no easy way to find a clinical trial that may be suitable for you.

For now, the best thing to do is to ask your doctor, or the health professional who you see most often.

You can browse all of the trials that the MRC CTU at UCL has open to recruitment. You can also visit the website of the UK Clinical Trials Gateway to search for trials. Some charities run registers of clinical trials on their area of interest, for example Cancer Research UK.

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

All trials have guidelines about who can take part, called inclusion/exclusion criteria.

These criteria are used to make sure that trials include the people who might benefit most from a new treatment, and exclude those for whom the new treatment might not be safe or appropriate. In many trials, women who are pregnant or trying to get pregnant are excluded. This is to ensure that there is no danger to the pregnancy. Other trials only include people of a certain age, or at a particular stage in their illness. A person cannot take part in a trial if, in their doctor’s opinion, they should be in one trial group as opposed to another. For example, if a trial is comparing whether or not to treat people identified very early in HIV disease, people who need treatment at that stage cannot join the trial.

You can find out more about the inclusion and exclusion criteria for all MRC CTU trials that are currently open to recruitment on the individual study page.