A group of Republican senators is demanding to know what steps the U.S. National Institutes of Health will take to ensure that results of clinical trials funded by the agency — both those conducted by its own scientists and outside researchers — are reported to a federal database.
In a letter sent on Thursday to NIH Acting Director Lawrence Tabak, the lawmakers cited a recent report showing the agency failed to conduct proper follow-up. Specifically, the NIH did not verify that half of 72 funded trials were reported in 2019 and 2020 to ClinicalTrials.gov, according to the report by the Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The OIG also pointed out that NIH researchers ran 57% of the reported studies, and 43% of those not reported. In addition, the researchers who ran the 37 trials for which results were not reported either failed to submit their findings altogether to the federal database or did so after required deadlines. Of the 72 trials reviewed, there were an equal number that were run by NIH and outside researchers.
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