Clinical trial registration report card
This article was originally published in The Gray Sheet
Executive Summary
The number of clinical trials publicly registered on NIH's ClinicalTrials.gov increased 73% over a period of six months, during which time the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) began turning away articles about studies not registered on the site. An article in the Dec. 29 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine indicates that 143 interventional device trials were registered on May 20, 2005 compared with 755 on Oct. 11, 2005. ICMJE journal members have stopped accepting results of ongoing trials not publicly registered as of Sept. 13, 2005. An accompanying editorial states, however, that many companies are not providing information about the primary outcome of their studies when they register. ICMJE announced its policy in September 2004 as part of an effort to ensure that both favorable and unfavorable study results are publicly reported (1"The Gray Sheet" Sept. 13, 2004, p. 3)...