Recruiting participants to studies about common diseases: Diabetes

According to the Swedish public health authority, the definition of an endemic disease is “…a disease with high frequency in the population that is deemed to have a large impact on the public health during a certain period of time”.

On of our endemic diseases is diabetes. According to Svenska Diabetesförbundet, more than 500 000 swedes have the disease (type 1 and 2)

Trialy recruits

During the spring of 2022, Trialy was in charge of the recruitment of research participants to a large international study about type-2 diabetes, conducted by researchers at Uppsala university. In the study, two different drugs against the disease was compared, in the hopes of a more efficient treatment in the future. Trialy is very proud to have been a part of this important research, by helping the researchers finding potential participants.

Criteria for participating

Who could participate in this study? To match the criteria of the study and be a participant, you couldn’t have had your diagnosis for more than 4 years. As a newly diagnosed diabetic, it is understandable that one is a bit confused by all the new information, but the more you learn about the disease, the more you can control it.

Another demand for the research participants of this study was that you couldn’t treat your diabetes with more than one pharmaceutic drug. Many diabetics treat their disease with more than one drug, and unfortunately that was against the rules for this study. 

Another common criteria for clinical trials is that the participant can’t have experienced cardiac arrest, heart attack or stroke. If you’ve participated in studies before you also recognize the question “Are you currently participating in another study?”. To be able to measure the result of the study, it’s important that the participants are not affected by different treatments or study protocols.

We hope that our contribution to this study made it possible for new steps to be taken in the research around diabetes and how the disease is best treated. As one of our endemic diseases it’s clear that diabetes have an enormous impact on the daily lives of many, and if their lives can be made a bit easier by progress in scientific studies – we are more than happy with our contribution.