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Cited by 155Pharmaceutical industry and healthcareAcademic Publishing and Open AccessMeta-analysis and systematic reviews

Rationale for WHO's new position calling for prompt reporting and public disclosure of interventional clinical trial results

Open access
Moorthy, Vasee S., Karam, Ghassan, Vannice, Kirsten S., Kieny, Marie-Paule·2015·PLOS Medicine
DOI 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001819PMC PMC4396122
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Abstract

On April 14, 2015, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a new statement on the public disclosure of clinical trial results (S1 Text) [1].The WHO statement not only re-affirms the ethical imperative of clinical trial results reporting, it also defines reporting timeframes, calls for results-reporting of older but still unpublished trials, and outlines steps to improve linkages between clinical trial registry entries and their published results.This updates and expands WHO's 2005 statement that "the registration of all interventional trials is a scientific, ethical, and moral responsibility" [2].WHO's 2005 statement called for all interventional clinical trials to be registered.Subsequently, there has been an increase in clinical trial registration prior to the start of trials.This has enabled tracking of the completion and timeliness of clinical trial reporting.There is now a strong body of evidence showing failure to comply with results-reporting requirements across intervention classes, even in the case of large, randomised trials [3][4][5][6][7].This applies to both industry and investigator-driven trials.In a study that analysed reporting from large clinical trials (over 500 participants) registered on clinicaltrials.govand completed by 2009, 23% had no results reported even after a median of 60 months following trial completion; unpublished trials included nearly 300,000 participants [3].Among randomised clinical trials (RCTs) of vaccines against five diseases registered in a variety of databases between 2006-2012, only 29% had been published in a peer-reviewed journal by 24 months following study completion [4].At 48 months after completion, 18% of trials were not reported at all, which included over 24,000 participants.In another study, among 400 randomly selected clinical trials, nearly 30% did not publish the primary outcomes in a journal or post results to a clinical trial registry within four years of completion [5].The Declaration of Helsinki and other statements have outlined the compelling reasons why interventional clinical trials should be reported in a timely fashion [8][9][10].In brief, not reporting clinical trial results is likely to lead to dissemination bias.This bias has the following major adverse consequences:• It affects understanding of the scientific state of the art.• It leads to inefficiencies in resource allocation for both research and development and financing of health interventions.• It creates indirect costs for public and private entities, including patients themselves, who pay for suboptimal or harmful treatments.• It potentially distorts regulatory and public health decision making.

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  • Delays in CPR initiation due to donning of personal protective equipment may impact patient outcomes, and thereby modify the measured effect of concurrent or subsequent, investigational, resuscitative interventions, such as new drug therapies, or temperature/ventilatory management during and/or after resuscitation.

    “Delays in CPR initiation due to donning of personal protective equipment may impact patient outcomes, 385,386,388 and thereby modify the measured effect of concurrent or subsequent, investigational, resuscitative interventions, such as new drug therapies, or temperature/ventilatory management during and/or after resuscitation.”

    From European Resuscitation Council Guidelines 2021: Ethics of resuscitation and end of life decisions (2021) · cites this paper as [388]

    The paper’s Abstract discusses prompt reporting and public disclosure of clinical trial results, not delays in starting CPR or their effect on patient outcomes. Searches for CPR, protective equipment, resuscitation, and survival found no passage addressing the cited clause. (LLM, conf=0.76)

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Authors
Moorthy, V. S., Karam, G., Vannice, K. S., & Kieny, M.-P.
Affiliations
World Health Organization (CH)
Corresponding author
Moorthy, Vasee S.
ORCID
Venue
PLOS Medicine
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Published
2015-04-14
Volume
12
Issue
4
Pages
e1001819
ISSN
  • 1549-1277 (ISSN-L)
  • 1549-1676
DOI
10.1371/journal.pmed.1001819
PMC
PMC4396122
OpenAlex
W1996092618
Cited by
155
References
13
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 9 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 27 · 2019: 8 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 14 · 2016: 27 · 2015: 16
FWCI
27.22
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • PLoS Medicine (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Funders
World Health Organization
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics › Pharmacology › Pharmaceutical industry and healthcare
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Academic Publishing and Open Access
  • Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty › Meta-analysis and systematic reviews
Keywords
public disclosure, clinical trial registration, reporting timeliness, unpublished trials, dissemination bias, clinical trial registries, randomized controlled trials, vaccine clinical trials, research integrity
MeSH terms
Clinical Trials as Topic, Humans, Morals, Publishing, Registries, Science, World Health Organization, Bias, Disclosure

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