Skip Navigation



Hum. Reprod. Advance Access published online on March 4, 2009
Human Reproduction, doi:10.1093/humrep/dep045
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF )
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
24/6/1247    most recent
dep045v1
Right arrow Submit a response
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me when eLetters are posted
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Guo, S.-W.
Right arrow Articles by Evers, J. L.H.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Guo, S.-W.
Right arrow Articles by Evers, J. L.H.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

New Debate

A call for more transparency of registered clinical trials on endometriosis

Sun-Wei Guo1,7, Lone Hummelshoj2, David L. Olive3, Serdar E. Bulun4, Thomas M. D'Hooghe5 and Johannes L.H. Evers6

1 Renji Hospital, and the Institute of Obstetric and Gynecologic Research, Shanghai Jiao-Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200001, China 2 Endometriosis.org, 89 Southgate Road, London N1 3JS, England 3 Wisconsin Fertility Institute, Madison, WI, USA 4 Division of Reproductive Biology Research, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA 5 Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Leuven University Fertility Center, UZ Gasthuisberg, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium 6 Division of Reproductive Medicine, Research Institute GROW, Maastricht University Medical Center, NL-6202 AZ Maastricht, The Netherlands

7 Correspondence address. Institute of Obstetric and Gynecologic Research, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Renji Hospital, 145 Shandong Zhong Road, Shanghai 200001, China. Fax: +86-21-53-88-23-77; E-mail: hoxa10{at}gmail.com

In response to the pressing need for more efficacious and safer therapeutics for endometriosis, there have been numerous reports in the last decade of positive results from animal and in vitro studies of various compounds as potential therapeutics for endometriosis. A handful of these have undergone phase II/III clinical trials. Since the announcement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors that mandated registration as a prerequisite for publication, 57 endometriosis-related clinical trials have been registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, an Internet-based public depository for information on drug studies. Among them, 25 are listed as completed, and 2 as suspended. There are 15 completed phase II/III trials, which evaluated the efficacy of various promising compounds. Yet only three of the 15 trials (20%) have published their results. The remaining 12 (80%) studies so far have not published their findings. We argue that this apparent lack of transparency will actually not benefit the trial sponsors or the public, and will ultimately prove detrimental to research efforts attempting to develop more efficacious and safer therapeutics for endometriosis. Thus we call for more transparency of clinical trials on endometriosis.

Key words: clinical trial/disclosure/endometriosis/registration/transparency


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Mol Hum ReprodHome page
S.-W. Guo
Epigenetics of endometriosis
Mol. Hum. Reprod., October 1, 2009; 15(10): 587 - 607.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.