Drug makers not disclosing enough clinical trial data
Over 1/3 of the trial results for 15 FDA-approved drugs were not disclosed by the pharmaceutical manufacturers, and as such fell foul of legal requirements that mandate companies to publish the results of clinical trials, according to new research published in the British Medical Journal. Influential physicians have embarked on a letter writing campaign to try and persuade US presidential candidates to publicly back calls to enforce penalties for companies who do not disclose the results of trials they have sponsored. Some pharmaceutical manufacturers (GSK, J&J and Pfizer) had a 100% compliance rate, but Sanofi and Gilead Science lagged behind with just a 22% disclosure ratio.

Clinical trial data for Vioxx was not fully disclosed; safety concerns later prompted Merck to pull it from the market.

When it comes to disclosing clinical trial data, some drug makers are still keeping secrets, according to new research published in the journal BMJ Open.

According to the study, 35 percent of all trial results for 15 drugs that were approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2012 were not disclosed. Additionally, nearly 30 percent of the trials conducted for those drugs failed to meet legal disclosure requirements.

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“This confirms that pharmaceutical companies often fall below legal and ethical standards,” said Jennifer Miller, an assistant professor in the division of medical ethics at the New York University School of Medicine and a co-author of the study, which looked at 318 clinical trials involving almost 100,000 participants.