Patients' preferences about participation in clinical trials studying complementary and alternative medicine

Context: Patients' unwillingness to participate in clinical research is one of the main challenges that researchers face today. In Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) research, a pertinent yet understudied question is the attitude of potential participants toward clinical trials that test CAM interventions. Objectives: To assess patients' attitudes and preferences regarding participation in clinical trials which test CAM rather than conventional treatments. Design: A 78-question, pencil-and-paper survey was conducted in collaboration with the Survey Research Center located in the Division of Biomedical Statistics and Informatics in the Department of Health Sciences Research at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Setting: The study took place at Mayo Clinic, an academic medical center for tertiary care in Rochester, Minnesota, USA. Patients or Other Participants: Participants were patients undergoing a general medical evaluation at the Division of General Internal Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at Mayo Clinic. Intervention: The researchers designed a cross-sectional, point-of-care survey. The study coordinator approached patients and invited them to participate. Outcome Measures: The study summarized the data for categorical variables, identifying numbers of participants and percentages and comparing two proportions using the Fisher exact test. Results: Out of 485 patients asked to participate, 400 (82%) completed the survey. Respondents were equally as interested in participating in clinical trials testing CAM as they were in trials testing conventional treatments (79% vs 69%, P =.09). For all participants, 107 (27%) were in favor of participating in CAM clinical trials and 118 (30%) were in favor of participating in conventional clinical trials. Conclusion: Respondents were interested equally in participating in clinical trials testing CAM vs conventional treatments.