The Difficulty of Finding Healthy Volunteers

In 1993, a study involving 370 individuals seeking to participate in alopecia treatment programs found that a high percentage of these ostensibly healthy volunteers had medical abnormalities. Specifically, 69% had abnormal blood test results, 30% had abnormal ECGs, and 26% had diastolic blood pressure of 85 mmHg or higher. Overall, 66% had some form of abnormality detected through testing. The study concluded that it is crucial to have pretreatment testing to ensure that any abnormalities are not wrongly attributed to the drug being tested. This research underscored the difficulties in establishing 'normal' baseline values for control subjects in clinical trials and the associated costs of thorough screening.