UK: Oxford group finds outcomes 45% of clinical trials aren’t reported

A frequently discussed problem in medical research is that many clinical drug trials don’t end up having their results reported publicly. The reasons vary. Results can be inconclusive or negative; or it’s harder, and there’s less incentive, to publish such results. This is often cited as a problem for medical research generally, as it’s important to know what doesn’t work as well as what does work.

A research group at the University of Oxford reports developing an online tool to track unreported results. It compares the US Food and Drug Administration’s list of permissions to start trials with the published reports of those trials online. The group notes the methodology isn’t perfect, but does provide some estimates on the extent of the problem.

From the report:

“Since Jan 2006, trial sponsors included in our dataset have completed 25,927 eligible trials, of which 11,714 (45.2%) have failed to make results available. Table 1 to Table 4 report the sponsors with the top five highest number of unreported trials, the highest number of eligible trials, the highest proportion of unreported trials, and the lowest proportion of unreported trials. In total, 2390/8799 (27.2%) trials with sponsors classed as “industry” were identified as unreported; 122/470 (26.0%) trials with sponsors classed as “US Fed” were identified as unreported; 361/996 (36.2%) trials with sponsors classed as “NIH” were identified as unreported; 8841/15662 (56.4%) trials with sponsors classed as “other” were identified as unreported. We find that 8.7 million patients were enrolled in trials that are identified as unreported.

Read the report

Powell-Smith A and Goldacre B. The TrialsTracker: Automated ongoing monitoring of failure to share clinical trial results by all major companies and research institutions [version 1; referees: awaiting peer review]. F1000Research 2016, 5:2629 (doi: 10.12688/f1000research.10010.1)