There are two different clinical studies that are currently accepting participants. One is seeking children who have autism, and the other is looking for parents of children who have autism. It is possible that the studies will reveal amazingly helpful treatments for autism, but there is no guarantee of this. Would you sign up your child to be in a clinical trial?
The Indiana University School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry is currently accepting participants for two, entirely different, clinical studies. Each of these studies is focused on finding interventional programs for autism.
One study is designed to discover whether or not a drug, called D-cycloserine, can be used to enhance social skills training interventions in kids and young adolescents who have autism. Currently, that drug has been approved for treatment of tuberculosis. It also has been used along with behavioral therapy for patients who have OCD, or anxiety.
This study wants 52 children, (who are between the ages of 5 and 11), to be enrolled in it. Half the kids will get the D-cycloserine drug, and the other half will get a placebo. Both groups will get ten weeks of intensive social skills training. Three months later, the kids will be assessed, so that long-term affects can be evaluated.
The other study is designed to find out the effectiveness of a structured parent training program, when compared to a comprehensive parental education program. This study is looking for parents who have young children who have an autism spectrum disorder. Those children must be between three and seven years of age, and they must be considered to have “significant behavior problems”.
Parents who are in this study will either be placed into one of two groups. One group will receive intensive parent training. The other group will take part in an educational program. This study will last six months.
Whether or not the training program was a success will be determined by improvements seen in the social, communication, and daily living skills of the children. It also will be based the amount of stress parents experience, and other factors.
Would you enroll your child into a clinical trial? It is a good idea for parents to get as much information as possible about the trial before you decide to enroll. You need to weigh out the pros and cons of participation.
Trials about medications could require your child to stop using his or her current medication while the trial is going on. If that drug is working for your child right now, then you have to decide if it is worth it to stop using it in order to participate in a clinical trial. You may want to consult your child’s doctor, or therapist, about the clinical trial, to see what their opinion of it is.
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