More than four in ten clinical trial results are not available for review

To shed more light on safe and effective drug treatments, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, HHS issued a final rule requiring all institutions performing clinical trials to post a summary of their trial results on clinicaltrials.gov.  However, according StatNews, the University of Oxford Evidence-Based Medicine Data Lab has found that more than four in ten trial results are not available for review. Sanofi, Novartis, The National Cancer Institute, the Mayo Clinic and GlaxoSmithKline are five of the worst offenders.

Until all trial results are posted on clinicaltrials.gov. we cannot fully understand the advantages and harmful effects of different treatments. Of particular concern is that trials with negative results are less likely to be posted on clinicaltrials.gov than those with positive results. It should lead us to wonder about whether the drugs whether the drugs we’re taking are safe, and if they are safe, do they work? Once popular drugs are not infrequently pulled from the market.

The Oxford data lab has compiled a list of all the universities, government agencies and pharmaceutical companies that have not posted all their trial results on clinicaltrials.gov. The list is available online, ranking companies based on the number of trial results not reported in order to pressure these companies to comply with the law and post their results.

In total, over the last decade, these entities have registered 25,927 clinical trials. But, they have not posted results for 45.2 percent of them, 11,714 clinical trial results.

Here’s more from Just Care:

• How safe are the drugs you’re taking?
• The majority of drugs the FDA has recently approved don’t work
• Once popular drugs pulled from the market
• Six tips for keeping your drug costs down if you have Medicare