Drugs, clinical trials and registers in the times of the coronavirus Emergency

ABSTRACT

Covid-19 is forcing medical doctors to deal with the urgent need to find clinical answers in an area where, unfortunately, there are still therapies with no evidence of efficacy and safety. In any case, they must make decisions and face the dilemma of immediately using any therapeutic options that has some plausibility of treatment or instead making clinical trial. However, the latter require formal steps and procedures. How do medical doctors understand which of these are essential and necessary? Is it really important to register the new clinical trials on the official platforms? Is this an unnecessary bureaucratic passage that can be avoided during the emergency phase? The present article tries to answer these questions by also addressing other critical issues related to clinical trials at a time when the good rules of clinical research must not be an obstacle to accessing the best available treatments.