Interested in who’s conducting clinical trials, where they’re doing it and on what products and procedures?
If so, visit "http://clinicaltrials.gov/"—the first phase of a new database being introduced by the National Institutes of Health, with information on more than 4,700 federal and private medical studies underway at more than 47,000 sites nationwide.
"Through this new database, NIH offers up-to-date information on promising patient-oriented research of hundreds of diseases and conditions," reported Acting Director of NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein, M.D.
The database resulted from 1997 legislation requiring the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through NIH, to broaden public access to information about clinical trials on a wide range of diseases and conditions. The database is maintained under NIH’s National Library of Medicine.
"If we are to continue making the giant strides in diagnosis, treatment and cure of illness that marked the last century, we must have active participation in clinical trials by well-informed volunteers," said the library’s director, Donald A.B. Lindberg, M.D.
In the project’s first phase, the database is focusing on clinical trials either being funded by NIH or conducted on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Md. In the second phase, the database will broaden its scope to include trials sponsored by other federal agencies and private industry.
Researchers use clinical trials to test the safety and efficacy of new drugs and procedures or other means of treating, diagnosing or preventing diseases. Such investigations help researchers understand how different people respond to medications and other therapeutic approaches, sometimes leading to new or improved treatments.
NIH has pledged that visits to the database are confidential, requiring no registration or identification of any kind, and that site visitors will not be contacted by the sponsors of clinical trials or by anyone else.
