U.K. committee: publicize clinical study reports

The U.K.'s Science and Technology Committee said full clinical trial reports should be placed in the public domain after a regulatory decision has been made about a drug. However, the committee stopped short of calling for wide dissemination of patient-level data, which it said should be controlled by an independent "gatekeeper" to ensure responsible release. The committee asked the government to require all U.K. trials be registered in a publicly available database. The committee wants the registration requirement to include retrospective registration of clinical trials of treatments used by NHS. It also proposed that summary-level data from all trials be published in a scientific journal.

The comments came in a (see BioCentury, Sept 11). ...