Competing Trials

From the urologist: "We are currently recruiting patients for a clinical research study involving the implantation of a small neurotransmitter device to treat urge urinary incontinence."

It sounds like the nerves leading to your bladder just get a boost, so it would be helpful for neurogenic bladder like mine, where the issue is nerve conduction. I don't know why it's a clinical trial: that article is two years old.

I think there is a rule that you can't be in two clinical trials at once. Otherwise, I would be all over this one.

Comments

[KC]

Ooooh. Might be worth contacting them anyway, since sometimes things get delayed and it might be after the evushield one completes?

[theQueen]

KC - perhaps it's advertising posing as a study?

[KC]

Either that or a new device doing a similar thing needs FDA approval before they sell it?

[TheQueen]

KC - Do they have to do a trial for every single permutation of a medicine? That seems excessive.

[KC]

Depends on how close it is to the original, I think, and whether the new dosage+additives have ever been separately studied before (i.e. in tolerance trials to verify that yes, 15mg is the best average dose but 25mg won't kill you) and have a plausible argument as to why they won't interact oddly.

Nerve-zappy devices: not sure, but I honestly kind of *want* them to verify that this thing that one dude dreamed up as probably equally good as or superior to the current bladder-zap-the-nerve devices does in fact 1. work and 2. not cause massive side effects. (controlled nerve zapping is an *extraordinarily* promising field for a ton of things - check out VNS - *and also* kind of like GI flora, we do not know at all the ins and outs of how it works, limitations, optimal settings, variation between individuals, additional effects, etc.)

[theQueen]

KC - they make it sound like they just put a wire close enough to your nerve that the electrical impulse just jumps the tracks when it finds the nerve impaired. It cannot be that simple, right?