Published Clinical Trials — Do They Provide Enough Valuable Information?

In September 2004, the members of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) published a joint editorial aimed at promoting registration of all clinical trials. Their goal is to foster a comprehensive, publicly available database of clinical trials (www.ClinicalTrials.gov) and establish uniform requirements for manuscripts submitted to biomedical journals. Using a list of the World Health organization's (WHO) minimal registration data set and a spreadsheet designed to collect a more comprehensive list of essential elements of a clinical trial, studies published prior to the requirement to register clinical trials on ClinicalTrials.gov were compared to those published after registration. Based on the data, it was determined there is a significant difference between studies published prior to and after the requirement to register clinical trials on ClinicalTrials.gov.