Is there a website or database where most clinical studies can be viewed?

Factual Questions
1

Here are a couple of examples of where this might be useful:

  1. I have read that there were several studies (many?) which showed problems with Vioxx for several years now. It is my understanding that these problems showed up as “excess” coronary events on studies that were testing other things (one that I read about showed that sodium naproxin had a 500% lower correlation with such events). The type of database or website that I’m talking about would make “meta” analysis possible even for casual users (or at least casual professional users).

  2. I remember seeing an episode of Sixty Minutes maybe five years ago where a government scientist claimed there were problems with Aspartame. He claimed that of the hundred or so studies of labratory animals submitted to the FDA by Monsanto that nearly half showed serious problems. I would like to be able to go to my “hypothetical” study database and bring up these studies so that I could review them at my leisure to draw my own conclusions.

I think that PubMed/Medline might be the closest thing to what I’m suggesting, but these include numerous journal entries in addition to studies. Furthermore, you cannot access many of the entries without additonal subscriptions to specific journals or associations. Also, you cannot easily do “cross study searches” at least to my knowledge. Finally, my ideal website would offer objective analysis of studies with regard to whether or not they were paid for by interested parties (cetarus paribus studies from independent sources are more reliable), and whether or not they were case controlled, single or double blinded, and or retrospective, prospective in nature. You could for instance put in the terms “LDL cholesterol and heart disease” and get back every study ever conducted on the issue and in essence “retrace” our understanding of the subject (quite possibly drawing new and innovative conclusions or at least promising directions for future research).

2

The short answer to your question is no, there is no single website or registry.

One of the fallouts of the Vioxx affair is that it looks like we are moving towards some type of universal registry. The pharmaceutical companies have long opposed it (they have good reasons from their point of view: it would cost them money, it might give their competitors a leg up, and it could open them up to litigation). However various interested parties such as Congress, the AMA and a group of influential medical journals have all come out in favor of such a registry, in some form. Some of the larger pharmaceutical companies maintain their own registries, but they only divulge what they want to divulge (usually late stage trials that worked). I believe there is also an independent registry out there, but it seems to be little used.

I really think it is only a matter of time until such a thing exists, and the only question is what entity is going to maintain it, and what sort of information will it contain.

(OT: I am actually taking two courses on clinical trials this year…I am working towards a Clinical Research Associate Certification. In the course that just ended we discussed the Vioxx case and the fallout from it extensively.)

You can find a lot of good clinical trial results info at www.fda.gov, but their search function leaves a lot to be desired…it can be hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.

If you have any more questions about some of the registries I mentioned I might be able to dig through my notes and point you in the right direction.