Nearly two dozen major organizations that fund medical research in Europe often failed to set policies or monitor progress for registering clinical trials and publishing study results, an issue that can lead to shortcomings in medical literature, a new analysis finds.
Among 21 of the largest public and philanthropic funders, only 14 mandated prospective trial registration and just six required that trial results be made public on registries within a year of a trial’s completion. In addition, only 43% of the funders actively monitored whether trials were registered, and just 38% tracked whether results were made public.
Overall, the organizations implemented an average of just four of 11 best practices for clinical trial transparency, as identified by the World Health Organization. And only nine of the organizations referred to reporting standards in their policies, according to the analysis, which was published in JAMA Network Open.
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