A clinical trial is a study that allows doctors to determine the usefulness and safety of new treatments or to compare a promising new treatment to another standard treatment.
Clinical trials are the only way to find out if a drug works and if it is safe for people to take.
Any drug that might improve the lives of people with HIV disease must go through careful testing before it will be made widely available to the hundreds of thousands of people who need treatment. These drugs were proven to work because people with HIV helped test them. Most studies today compare an investigational drug or set of drugs with the one now being used to see which treatment works better. To participate in an AIDS clinical trial, an individual must qualify for a study. Qualifications are different for each study and may include a person's age, symptoms and past treatments.