ClinicalTrials.Gov: Is the Glass Half Full?

摘要

The Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act (FDAMA) of 1997 required the US Department of Health and Human Services to establish an easy-to-use Web site for clinical studies of experimental treatments for serious and life-threatening diseases sponsored by government, industry, and not-for-profit organizations.1'2 The legislation resulted in the creation of the Web-based ClinicalTrials.gov (http://clinicaltrials.gov) site, which was made accessible in February 2000. It was the beginning of a new era for meeting the needs for transparency by reporting accurate information on new therapeutic options for patients, their family members, and the clinicians taking care of them. The site was created to avoid selective bias in both academic and industrial research of clinical trials in which favorable results are published while unfavorable ones are withheld.