A number of US research institutions have been slow to report their clinical trial findings, Nature News reports.
It notes that federal law requires clinical trials in the US to be registered at ClinicalTrials.gov and for most trials to report their results there within a year. But, according to a report compiled by Universities Allied for Essential Medicines and TranspariMed using data from the FDA Amendments Act TrialsTracker, 15 of the 40 institutions examined were in full compliance. Institutions in full compliance include Duke University, Yale University, and Washington University, among others, it says.
However, results from 140 trials conducted by the institutions analyzed are not included on the registry, and five institutions — the University of California, San Francisco, Columbia University, the Mayo Clinic, MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the University of Chicago — account for half of those unreported trials, the report says. Spokespeople from UCSF and Columbia tell Nature News that some of the trials included on the list are still ongoing, the data are being analyzed, or the data have been submitted to the registry but don't yet appear there.