It takes nearly two years to get results from a clinical trial published, report researchers led by Yale University School of Medicine's Joseph Ross in JAMA Internal Medicine. Ross and his colleagues examined the 1,336 clinical trial publication that came out in 2009 and traced them back using ClinicalTrials.gov, Medline, and National Library of Medicine data to their completion date. From this, they found that the median time to publication was 21 months. A previous study involving members of this group found that between nearly a third and a half of clinical trials are never published.
"Because these studies are taking nearly two years to become available, it is slowing the uptake of the information and slowing progress in research and clinical practice," Ross tells Ed Silverman at Pharmalot.