Drugmakers Are Doing Better at Listing the Details of Medical Studies

Drugmakers Are Doing Better at Listing the Details of Medical Studies
January 10, 2007 13:41
By LINDA A. JOHNSON

Drug companies are doing a much better job of supplying key information
about research they are doing since medical journals started pressuring
them to enter studies in a government registry.

The federal registry, at http://www.clinicaltrials.gov, began operating
in 2000 but saw little industry participation until late 2004. That was
when the 11 members of the International Committee of Medical Journal
Editors said they would publish only studies registered early on, in
part to keep drug companies from suppressing the results of experiments
that did not turn out the way they wanted.

New England Journal of Medicine editor in chief Dr. Jeffrey Drazen and
Dr. Deborah A. Zarin of the National Library of Medicine, which
operates the registry, reported on its progress in an editorial in
Thursday's issue of the journal.

Only 8 percent of the 2,983 studies that drugmakers added to the
registry last year failed to describe the outcomes being measured in
the experiment, such as cholesterol levels or deaths. That was down
from 26 percent of studies registered in the prior years.

Meanwhile, none of the 2006 filings omitted the name of the treatment
being tested, as did a small number of trials registered before 2006,
Drazen and Zarin wrote.

The pharmaceutical industry has sometimes withheld such information in
the past, calling it commercially sensitive.

"Although more can be done, this improvement in registration quality is
to be praised," Drazen and Zarin wrote.

Previously, they reported in the journal that drugmakers were still
leaving out key details in the period from May through October 2005 _ a
month after the journals' new mandate took effect.

At the time, they noted Pfizer Inc., the world's biggest drugmaker, was
the worst at reporting names in its new listings, leaving out more than
6 percent. Last year, none of the 115 trials it registered left out the
treatment or outcome being tested.

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On the Net: http://www.nejm.org

International Committee of Medical Journal Editors: http://www.icmje.org