Of the 7,274 clinical trials that should have included their results in the EUCTR, only 3,601 (50%) had done so at the time of the analysis.
According to a recent article in the British Medical Journal, half of the clinical trials carried out in the European Union fail to comply with the legal requirement that requires the publication of their results in an open access database.
In this retrospective study, 7,274 clinical trials were identified that should have added their results into the EU Clinical Trials Register (EUCTR) database, with at least 12 months having passed since their completion. However, only 3,601 (50%) had done so at the time of the analysis. When these data were examined in more detail, it was observed that most of the trials that had published their results had a commercial sponsor (68%) compared with those that were not sponsored (11%).
These figures are very similar to those observed in the US ClinicalTrials.gov database, although it is difficult to make direct comparisons since the legal requirements in each area vary greatly.
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