Raja Sajjad Asghar, Javeria Saleem, Muhammad Ishaq.
Participation of healthy volunteers in clinical trials - motives, barriers, and ethical issues.
Biomedica Jan ;39(1):1-6.

Recruitment of an adequate number of healthy volunteers is vital for the success of clinical trials but there is limited research on factors motivating the healthy volunteers to participate in clinical trials, especially in developing countries. Pakistani researchers also faced problems in enrollment of enough healthy volunteers during the COVID-19 pandemic when a number of clinical trials began in Pakistan. Around 117 research proposals were processed by the National Bioethics Committee of Pakistan in the last 2 years. A major proportion of these clinical research studies target healthy populations as primary research subjects or as controls. Numerous studies have investigated factors such as motives, barriers, risks, benefits, and ethical values affecting the recruitment and participation of healthy volunteers in clinical trials. We have reviewed the literature to learn about factors that motivate or prevent healthy persons to volunteer along with the pertaining ethical issues. The financial incentive is the principal motive for healthy volunteers to participate in clinical trials along with altruism, contribution to sciences, research and other people’s health, desire to take part in something important, learning more about science and medicine, access to healthcare and free medical checkup, and prospects of one’s social network expansion whereas time inconvenience, confidentiality, possible side effects and route of administration of drug, and fear of contacting the disease were identified as important barriers. The application of knowledge of these motives and barriers will help Pakistani researchers to enroll an adequate number of healthy volunteers for their clinical trials.

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