AAFP, ACP join nearly 600 other organizations in support of clinical data transparency

The American Academy of Family Physicians and the American College of Physicians has announced their support of the AllTrials campaign, joining 595 other organizations from around the world, according to a recent press release.

The AllTrials campaign, which began in 2013 but was only launched in the U.S. earlier this week, calls for better reporting of clinical trials.

“As a family physician, I rely on the best available evidence to inform the decisions I make and the conversations I have with my patients,” Robert Wergin, MD, AAFP President, said in a press release. “Currently, the information we have from clinical trials is often cherry picked, or worse – completely hidden from public view. This creates huge problems for medical professionals and patients all over the globe.”

According to AllTrials, registration of all clinical trials, both past and present, would require three steps.

First, prior to any participant recruitment, trials should be registered and disclose a brief summary of the trial’s protocol. Any trials that were previously conducted, but not registered, would need to be registered immediately. If trials are not registered, no funding or permissions should be granted to the study sponsors, according to AllTrials.

Second, within 1 year of a trial’s completion, details on the protocol, primary and secondary outcomes, methods, adverse events and any statistical analyses should be made publicly available wherever the trial was registered.

Finally, AllTrials is calling for clinical trials’ full reports to be made publically available. These thorough reports contain information that may be vital for physicians when assessing the pros and cons of prescribing specific medications.

By registering trials and making the full results available, AllTrials and their supporters believe there is a huge benefit to not only ethics surrounding trials, but also on public health.

According to AllTrials, while various countries are considering ways in which making individual patient data publicly available would be beneficial, they are not currently calling for such a step.

“We are calling on everyone in our sector to join us in supporting the AllTrials campaign. Hundreds of thousands of patients have taken part in clinical trials which have never reported results. For every day that passes, more information is at risk of being lost forever. We have to make every clinical trial count,” AllTrial’s press release stated.

Reference:

AllTrials. All trials registered. All trials reported. Available at: http://www.alltrials.net//wp-content/uploads/2013/09/What-does-all-trials-registered-and-reported-mean.pdf. Accessed July 31, 2015.