I couldn’t find an interventionist study done with hair dye, presumably because you can’t force some people to dye their hair, or work around hair dye, and force others to not dye their hair, or avoid working around hair dye. So I decided to read/write about a study I took part in a few years back. Of course, I couldn’t find the results of this study, so I read about a very similar trial. The trial I was in involved a newer version of Strattera, an Eli Lilly medication for treating ADHD. Unfortunately this drug has many side effects, including extreme drowsiness to the point of interfering with daily life. The study drug I was “taking” was supposed to eliminate this side effect. As it turns out, I was on a placebo. The study I read about was set up extraordinarily similarly; this one about Strattera. It was conducted as a double-blind study, meaning that the doctor administering the drug also did not know which dose of the drug the patients were taking, if any at all. The patients could take anywhere from 40mg to 100mg of eitheratomoxetine hydrochloride (Strattera) or a placebo, which looked exactly like the actual Strattera pill. The test was conducted to see if the drug is, in fact, as effective as previously thought, and if the drug will remain effective over a long period of time (at least one year). They came to pretty much the same conclusion as the original clinical trials, meaning that the drug was effective in treating moderate to severe ADHD in adult patients, ages 18-50, for a year or more before the effect will become null and patients will feel a relapse of symptoms. Many people were excluded from the study, including people with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder. This excludes many confounding variables, but is also completely unrealistic. By excluding these variables instead of using them as factors, the trial is almost useless. ADHD usually comes along with other psychological disorders, such as the ones used as exclusionary factors; thus making this trial’s findings completely useless information for many people with ADHD in addition to other psychological disorders who may need this medicine at one point of another. Others excluded: those with current drug or alcohol dependence or taking medicines that have proved to react with the Strattera. The study was one to test the safety of the drug, as in, testing to see if the drugs effects will wear off without the patients’ knowledge; however, I see the drugs reactions/interactions with other drugs to be an extremely important factor in safety. I was not satisfied with the findings of this particular study.
Yes I agree with you that the exclusion of people with depression, anxiety, etc was a mistake. It seems like those types of issues are quite common with attention deficit disorder and by limiting the subjects the results probably aren't as valid as they might have been with people who have psychological disorders. It is an interesting study though and interesting that you found one so similar to the study you participated in.
ReplyDeleteI find it interesting that you were involved in a very similar study as to this one you described. Hopefully the conclusion of your study was more satisfactory than this study. The exclusion of people who have those other psychological disorder does make the whole study unrealistic, and they could have kept those people since as long as long as they random distributed Strattera and the placebo, then the results would not be effected since the randomization would provide good internal validity. However, I guess since they were looking for how long the drug’s effect last, they did not want to deal with other factors such as other psychological disorders, though that blows since you want to know about this. I also find it interesting that they provided a double-blind study and I am curious to know if the doctors ever give anything away by accident, whether it is via word choice or body language.
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