Clinical trials are the best way we have of testing whether a medicine is safe and effective. When trials remain unreported, this means that patients and doctors don’t have the full information about the benefits and risks of treatments.
Trials registered on ClinicalTrials.gov should share results on the site shortly after completing, or publish in a journal. But many organisations fail to report the results of clinical trials. TrialsTracker, a new automated service launched to shine a spotlight on drug companies and universities, found that nearly half of all trials run by major sponsors in the past 10 years were missing results.
For example, the drug company Sanofi has failed to publish results for almost two thirds of the clinical trials it has conducted in the past decade.
Nearly half of all trials run by major sponsors in past decade are unpublished, BMJ 5955, 04 November 2016.
Explore trials tracker data (last updated October 2016) to see the universities, government bodies and pharmaceutical companies that aren’t sharing their clinical trial results.