Medical research conducted on people who voluntarily participate in these studies and who help discover better ways to treat, prevent, diagnose and understand diseases that affect humans.
Published in Chapter:
Advantages, Disadvantages, and Future Trends on the Use of Design of Experiments in Cross-Over Trials in Nutritional Clinical Investigation
Jose Manuel Miranda (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain), Alicia del Carmen Mondragon Portocarrero (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain), Alexandre Lamas Freire (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain), Carlos Manuel Franco Abuin (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain), and Alberto Cepeda Saez (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Spain)
Copyright: © 2020
|Pages: 16
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-1518-1.ch007
Abstract
The use of clinical trials to demonstrate effect of foods consumption on human health has increased significantly in recent years at the global level. As in other areas of human health, some authors choose to use parallel trial designs, while others prefer to use crossover designs for these trials. Because crossover trials have the advantage of reducing the number of subjects needed and the economic cost to be performed, they have many advocates within the scientific community. However, these types of tests also have numerous drawbacks, due to the difficulty of carrying out adequate statistical analyses, the lack of reliable standards adapted to them or confounding factors. In this chapter, the advantages and disadvantages of crossover designs and whether they are a recommended option for human nutrition research are shown. The usefulness of design of experiments coupled to crossover trials, especially when comparing various levels of the dependent variable, are also discussed.