The results from about half the clinical trials conducted by large drug makers in the past 10 years haven't been released, writes Pharmalot's Ed Silverman at Stat News.
This data, he notes, come from a new tool from AllTrials, which advocates for results from every clinical trial to be reported.
The Trials Tracker tool has sifted through ClinicalTrials.gov to uncover trial sponsors that haven't shared their results either at that site or in a journal article. According to Trials Tracker, Sanofi tops the list with 285 studies — some 65 percent of their trials — with their results going unreported, followed by Novartis Pharmaceuticals and the US National Cancer Institute. Silverman notes that Ranbaxy Laboratories hasn't any findings from its 35 trials.
At the other end of the spectrum is Shire, which has reported all of its trial results, followed by Colgate Palmolive, which is missing one of its 32 trials, and Bristol Myers Squibb, which is missing five of its 115 trials.
"Everyone has been talking about this problem for far too long. We hope that increasing accountability will help to drive change forward," AllTrials founder Ben Goldacre says in a statement.