A pharmaceutical company develops a new antihypertensive drug. Samples of 24 hypertensive patients, randomly selected from a large population of hypertensive people, are randomly divided into 2 groups of 12. One group is given the new drug over a period of 1 month; the other group is given a placebo according to the same schedule. Neither the patients nor the treating physicians are aware of which patients are in which group. At the end of the month, measurements are made of the patient’s blood pressures. This study

Here, a pharmaceutical company develops a new anti-hypertensive drug; samples of 24 hypertensive patients, randomly selected from a large population of hypertensive people, are randomly divided into 2 groups of 12, and one group is given the new drug over a period of 1 month & the other group is given a placebo according to the same schedule, Since a new drug (intervention) is given it is an experimental/ interventional study (not a prospective study which is only observational in design) Also, there are 2 groups, i.e. experimental group (Intervention – new drug is given) and reference group (no intervention is given – only placebo is given) which are compared concurrently, thus it is a ‘Concurrent parallel design of RCT’ (there is no cross-over) Also, neither the patients nor the treating physicians are aware of which patients are in which group, thus it is a ‘double blinded RCT’.