According to an editorial published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, due to the fact that medical journals began to pressure pharmaceutical companies to enter research in a US government registry, manufacturers of drugs have done a better job of providing significant information concerning their studies.
The editorial stated that eight per cent of the 2 983 studies added to the federal registry in 2006 did not describe crucial outcomes, such as deaths or cholesterol levels, being measured in the trials. The Associated Press reported that in the past several years the rate was 26 per cent.
The US federal registry was introduced in 2000, however there was only restricted medication industry participation until late 2004, when the members of the International Committee on Medical Journal Editors said they’d only reveal research that was signed into the registry in the early stages, the Associated Press informed.
The committee made the move, in part, to prevent drug producers from trying to hide the results of trials that gave unwanted results.
