One-Third of Clinical Trial Results Never Disclosed, Study Finds

  • Only 29% published in journal in two years, 13% on registry
  • Dissemination varies widely among 51 academic medical centers

One-third of clinical trials conducted at 51 major U.S. universities and academic hospitals were never published in a peer-reviewed journal or in a government registry online, according to a new study in the BMJ, formerly the British Medical Journal.

The researchers looked at 4,347 trials that were completed between October 2007 and September 2010. Of those, only 29 percent had results published within two years of finishing data collection, and 13 percent were posted on the government database ClinicalTrials.gov within the same period, the study found. Overall, about 67 percent of the studies disclosed their results by July 2014.

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