clinical trial

Cady walks out of the school gate holding onto an adult’s hand. Legs wide apart and feet in-turned, her gait is the first giveaway to a casual observer that something is not quite ‘right.’ Her neutral expression shifts when she sees me; maybe not enough for someone else to notice it, but I see it. [...]

I wanted to hurl the tablet in my hands across the windowless room. I’d been answering questions about my severe depression for over three hours at the baseline visit for a research study. I was in the home stretch, fending off fatigue and migraine when a question on the screen broke me. It asked, “How many hours [...]

In 2020, I took part in a psilocybin trial. Psilocybin is the psychedelic ingredient found in magic mushrooms. The trial was carried out at a London hospital and designed to study the potential benefits of psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression — a condition I have struggled with for 55 years. The program consisted of five therapy [...]

Update: It was announced on December 18, 2020 that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has expanded the indication for belimumab (Benlysta) to adults with active lupus nephritis who are receiving standard therapy. Despite existing treatments and advancements in medicine, 10–30% of people with lupus nephritis reach end-phase kidney failure. As this condition can be fatal, patients with lupus [...]

A new drug designed to help people on the autism spectrum with social skills is currently being tested in a clinical trial. While the drug, balovaptan, is of interest to the medical community, many within the autism community are against “treating” or “curing” autism, advocating instead for neurodiversity acceptance. Balovaptan acts on receptors, an outside structure of [...]