As mentioned in a previous article, a clinical trial is a type of study which investigates the behaviors of a new treatment or intervention on a group of volunteers. Clinical Trial Registration was introduced as a practice to inform the community of researchers about the initiation of a trial. In this regard, the clinical trials registry in the WHO Registry Network was established as a platform for the registration of clinical trials.
In 2005, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors announced that no manuscript would be published unless it is registered in the clinical trials registry. However, it was in 2007 when the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 clearly explained the conditions for the registration. In fact, the importance of clinical trial registration lies in the following issues:
- Avoiding duplication of studies: Governments, academic, and research centers can make appropriate decisions to support new studies based on the availability of previous clinical trial data, which saves research fundings
- Evaluating the completed clinical trials: Editors and reviewers of journals can be informed about similar studies and evaluated the ongoing ones.
- Preventing selective bias by researchers
- Registering clinical trials helps patients who are willing to participate in these trials to have easy access to such studies.
The benefits of clinical trial registration are presented, as follows:
- The ethical principles are followed and the patient consent form is obtained.
- The credibility of the generated data is improved.
- The presence of participants exposed to potential risks in a clinical trial is avoided.
- The provision of the chance for doctors to minimize the problems with clinical trials.
- The research community would be informed about the results of a clinical trial that does not have any conflicts of interest related to the pharmaceutical companies.
In the link below you can find the name of countries and their registry address https://www.who.int/ictrp/network/primary/en/
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