MPs call for more transparent clinical trials

"Drug companies and medical researchers are putting patients' lives in danger by failing to publish unfavourable results from clinical trials, MPs have warned," The Guardian reports. The news follows the recent publication of a report (PDF, 2.3Mb) by the influential House of Commons Science and Technology Committee, which called for greater transparency in clinical trials and the data they produce.   What are clinical trials? There is currently no regulatory definition of exactly what constitutes a clinical trial. The term is generally understood to mean a study that assesses how effective and safe a new drug or intervention is. Most clinical trials take the form of a randomised controlled trial, where a new intervention is compared against either an existing intervention or a placebo (dummy treatment).   What are the concerns about clinical trials? Currently, pharmaceutical companies (or anyone else) have no legal or regulatory obligation to make any data gathered during a clinical trial publically available. In recent years, this fact has alarmed many healthcare professionals as it may lead to a distorted view of the effectiveness and safety of a particular intervention. This could in turn have an impact on patients' wellbeing. The problem of publication bias, where studies with positive results are far more likely to get published in peer-reviewed journals than studies with negative results, has long been recognised. The current best estimate is th...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Medication QA articles Source Type: news