ArticleJournal of studies on alcohol and drugs2013
Representativeness of patients enrolled in influential clinical trials: a comparison of substance dependence with other medical disorders.
Article in Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Comparing adult cannabis treatment-seekers enrolled in a clinical trial with national samples of cannabis users in the United States.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2017Trial
- The SALOME study: recruitment experiences in a clinical trial offering injectable diacetylmorphine and hydromorphone for opioid dependency.Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy · 2015Trial
- Generalizability of clinical prediction models in mental health.Molecular psychiatry · 2025Observational
- You've got mail: comparing individuals who do and do not provide DNA saliva samples by mail in a study of severe alcohol use disorder.Alcohol and alcoholism (Oxford, Oxfordshire) · 2025Article
- Representativeness of patients enrolled in a primary care clinical trial for heavy/problem substance use.Substance abuse · 2018Article
- Harnessing Implementation Science to Increase the Impact of Health Equity Research.Medical care · 2017Article
- Visual aggregate analysis of eligibility features of clinical trials.Journal of biomedical informatics · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveThe purpose of this study was to determine whether randomized trials of treatments for substance dependence differ from those for other medical disorders on quality of enrollment information reporting and sample representativeness.
methodTwenty highly cited clinical trials (publication date 2002-2010) of treatments for each of 14 prevalent disorders were identified by structured literature search. The disorders were alcohol dependence, drug dependence, nicotine dependence, Alzheimer's disease, breast cancer, colorectal cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, depression, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, hypertension, ischemic heart disease, lung cancer, and schizophrenia. The 280 clinical trials were coded for number of individuals screened for eligibility, number of screened individuals meeting eligibility criteria, and number of eligible individuals refusing to participate.
resultsSubstance-dependence treatment trials were significantly more likely to track and report enrollment information (75% vs. 45% of clinical trials for other disorders, p < .001). Substance-dependence trials did not differ from trials focused on other disorders on mean rate of non-enrollment. Across disorders, the primary driver of non-enrollment appeared to be clinical trial exclusion criteria rather than eligible patients refusing to enroll.
conclusionsRelative to other disorders, trials in the substance-dependence field do a better (although imperfect) job of tracking and reporting enrollment information. Low enrollment rates and unrepresentative samples are not challenges unique to treatment outcome studies in the substance-dependence field. Across a range of disorders, clinical trials that use eligibility criteria judiciously are more likely to produce findings that generalize to front-line clinical practice than are trials that restrict enrollment to a small and unrepresentative subset of patients.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.