Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • News & Views
  • Published:

Clinical trials

A transparent future for clinical trial reporting

Compliance with reporting clinical trial results varies across research fields and types of sponsors. In rheumatology, most industry-funded trials of biologic agents are currently reported promptly. Optimizing clinical research will nevertheless require steps beyond deposition of summary results, including making raw data and protocols available, and assuring independence of the research agenda.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

References

  1. US Food and Drug Administration. Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007. Public Law 110–85 [online], (2007).

  2. Anderson, M. L. et al. Compliance with results reporting at ClinicalTrials.gov. N. Engl. J. Med. 372, 1031–1039 (2015).

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Prayle, A. P., Hurley, M. N. & Smyth, A. R. Compliance with mandatory reporting of clinical trial results on ClinicalTrials.gov: cross sectional study. BMJ 344, d7373 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Law, M. R., Kawasumi, Y. & Morgan, S. G. Despite law, fewer than one in eight completed studies of drugs and biologics are reported on time on ClinicalTrials.gov. Health Aff. (Millwood) 30, 2338–2345 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Saito, H. & Gill, C. J. How frequently do the results from completed US clinical trials enter the public domain?—A statistical analysis of the ClinicalTrials.gov database. PLoS ONE 9, e101826 (2014).

  6. Ioannidis, J. P. & Karassa, F. B. The need to consider the wider agenda in systematic reviews and meta-analyses: breadth, timing, and depth of the evidence. BMJ 341, c4875 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Ioannidis, J. P., Karassa, F. B., Druyts, E., Thorlund, K. & Mills, E. J. Biologic agents in rheumatology: unmet issues after 200 trials and $200 billion sales. Nat. Rev. Rheumatol. 9, 665–673 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Khan, N. A., Lombeida, J. I., Singh, M., Spencer, H. J. & Torralba, K. D. Association of industry funding with the outcome and quality of randomized controlled trials of drug therapy for rheumatoid arthritis. Arthritis Rheum. 64, 2059–2067 (2012).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Goodman, S. N. Clinical trial data sharing: what do we do now? Ann. Intern. Med. 162, 308–309 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Flacco, M. E. et al. Head-to-head randomized trials are mostly industry sponsored and almost always favor the industry sponsor. J. Clin. Epidemiol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclinepi.2014.12.016 (2015).

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to John P. A. Ioannidis.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Table 1

Update as of 27 March 2015 on RCTs of anti-TNF agents in immune-mediated diseases that were registered by January 20, 2013 in ClinicalTrials.gov but had not been published by that time.* (DOCX 34 kb)

PowerPoint slides

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Karassa, F., Ioannidis, J. A transparent future for clinical trial reporting. Nat Rev Rheumatol 11, 324–326 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrrheum.2015.65

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrrheum.2015.65

This article is cited by

Search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing