Potential side effects of study drug

[geno]

Rookie question:

Do you avoid certain studies because of the potential side effects listed during screening?

I've only done one study so far.

When I screened for my second one, a cancer drug. They said people experienced hair loss, psychosis, and loss of erection, and twenty other extreme sounding after effects. And one person died, but this they said was possibly due to that person having high blood pressure, diabetes, and some other ****.

I know every study/new drug comes with risks, but this time around they were scaring me with the effects it had on other participants apparently.


Do you guys go in to the study regardless of what the potential side effects are?

I'm new to the game and trying to learn the ropes safely.

[vark]

can you say which place it was where someone died? also, do you know if it was a patient, or a healthy volunteer? it would be huge news if a healthy patient died in a study. in a patient study of a cancer drug, it is not unusual some people would die of their cancer while in the study.

i have done 50 studies and rarely have any side effects, and never anything serious. i only do healthy volunteer studies so i haven't run into the kind where it affects your cognition. i've been warned to stay away from "brain slug" studies where it affects your thinking, it would frustrate me if i went all the way to a screening and only then got told of serious side effects that scared me away from the study. so it's ok to ask a lot of questions during the phone screening, and if they dont know tell them to find out from the study doctor and get back to you to before you screen. the ethical thing would be to email us the consent before we come in, but most places don't do this. use your own judgment. but my experience has been that almost all studies have no significant side effects, and if you get in one that does, you are free to leave.

as far as deaths in studies, eli lilly had a suicide 20 years ago and stopped doing their own studies. paraexel had a study in england where 6 patients had severe effects and were hospitalized, but did not die. biotrial, i think, had a patient death in a study in france a couple years ago.
there was a young man who died in a university hospital study a number of years ago in a genetic therapy study, but it wasn't one of the clinics listed here.

[bloodmoney45]

Dec 22, 2020 16:16:09 GMT -5 geno said:

Rookie question:

Do you avoid certain studies because of the potential side effects listed during screening?

I've only done one study so far.

When I screened for my second one, a cancer drug. They said people experienced hair loss, psychosis, and loss of erection, and twenty other extreme sounding after effects. And one person died, but this they said was possibly due to that person having high blood pressure, diabetes, and some other ****.

I know every study/new drug comes with risks, but this time around they were scaring me with the effects it had on other participants apparently.


Do you guys go in to the study regardless of what the potential side effects are?

I'm new to the game and trying to learn the ropes safely.

I've been doing studies for years. When I first started, if the side effects scared me, I would leave. Eventually I needed the money so bad I began doing studies with side effects that scared me. What I realize is I didn't have any side effects or if I did they were hardly noticeable and gone within a short period. That led to doing more studies with side effects that would have scared me in the past. Now I do almost any study as long as it pays well. One thing to keep in mind is the half life of cancer medicines. They can stay in your body for a long time and may prevent you from doing another study in the short term.   

[geno]

Thanks for responding and sharing from your own experience.

What's been the length of the "half life" of the cancer meds you've encountered? how long have you had to wait out until your next study?

[labrat1]

Jan 7, 2021 16:26:25 GMT -5 bloodmoney45 said:

Dec 22, 2020 16:16:09 GMT -5 geno said:

Rookie question:

Do you avoid certain studies because of the potential side effects listed during screening?

I've only done one study so far.

When I screened for my second one, a cancer drug. They said people experienced hair loss, psychosis, and loss of erection, and twenty other extreme sounding after effects. And one person died, but this they said was possibly due to that person having high blood pressure, diabetes, and some other ****.

I know every study/new drug comes with risks, but this time around they were scaring me with the effects it had on other participants apparently.


Do you guys go in to the study regardless of what the potential side effects are?

I'm new to the game and trying to learn the ropes safely.

I've been doing studies for years. When I first started, if the side effects scared me, I would leave. Eventually I needed the money so bad I began doing studies with side effects that scared me. What I realize is I didn't have any side effects or if I did they were hardly noticeable and gone within a short period. That led to doing more studies with side effects that would have scared me in the past. Now I do almost any study as long as it pays well. One thing to keep in mind is the half life of cancer medicines. They can stay in your body for a long time and may prevent you from doing another study in the short term.   

It is actually ironic. Experienced , professional lab rats take chances and have learned which types of drugs could or would affect them and they know which kinds of studies to avoid and which studies will not affect them or much.

As in the case of the original poster here, it was revealing to find out that a lot of studies will have few or no effects or perhaps only mild ones that go away soon.

On one hand people are being used as guinea pigs to see who gets sick, but on the other hand it can be said that very severe effects and deaths are, in the greatest sense, rare since with the thousands of trials, there aren't several deaths or even one death per group of research participants in any one drug trial.
It is tricky to just say this but participating is relatively or essentially safe. It can be a matter of a roll of the dice as to who experiences a real severe reaction. It can depend which facility and/or study doctor you are dealing with.
Of course a lot of lab rats have stories of being affected. I have done studies in which I felt nauseated and sick for a few days but any long lasting effects such as hair loss or psychosis (forget loss of erection), never.
I did once apply for a study in which I was told that the medication can cause genital dryness in women and shrinking of the male organ in males. I did not end up doing that study.

In other studies I have been affected by Naltrexone which makes me feel sick for days. So I avoid Naltrexone studies.

It was interesting to read that cancer drugs stay in your body a long time.
I recently did a study for a cancer drug and two of the doses did not affect me at all.
The third and last dose apparently did . There were no severe painful symptoms, basically just odd intermittent rapid-pulse episodes that lasted days. It was rather mysterious for the study doctors (or so it seemed to me) because supposedly the medication was out of the system in some 24 hours. But I guess there will always be cases in one individual can go through what several others don't.

For a lot of beginning lab rats, it will be a matter of doing different studies and finding out what does and does not agree with them. Hopefully no study will cause any thing that is life-long and intensely debilitating.