ArticleeLife2022
The proportion of randomized controlled trials that inform clinical practice.
Article in eLife, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 20 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
20 citing papers in PubMed.
- International Stakeholder Guidance for Improving Informativeness of Randomized Clinical Trials.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Article
- Current State of Clinical Trials for Keloid Management: An Analysis of Trials Registered on ClinicalTrials.gov.Cureus · 2026Article
- Genetic Evidence Linking Immune Cell Subsets to Psoriatic Arthritis Susceptibility: A Mendelian Randomization Study.Psoriasis (Auckland, N.Z.) · 2026Article
- An assessment of the informativeness of clinical trials in digital mental health.Npj mental health research · 2025Article
- Improving Trial Informativeness: A Rapid Review of Global Research on How to Ensure Trials Are Useful.Journal of evaluation in clinical practice · 2025Review
- Scientific review of protocols to enhance informativeness of global health clinical trials.Trials · 2025Article
- Strategic policy options to improve quality and productivity of biomedical research.Politics and the life sciences : the journal of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences · 2025Article
- Analysis of control arms in oncology randomised trials in Brazil: a cross-sectional study.BMJ oncology · 2025Article
- Pharmacy Integrated Transitions (PIT) trial: a protocol for a pragmatic cluster-randomised crossover trial.BMJ open · 2024Article
- The Utilization of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses in Stroke Guidelines.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- A maturity model for the scientific review of clinical trial designs and their informativeness.Trials · 2024Article
- Perspective on Intradiscal Therapies for Lumbar Discogenic Pain: State of the Science, Knowledge Gaps, and Imperatives for Clinical Adoption.Journal of pain research · 2024Article
- Scientia pro bono humani generis: Science for the benefit of humanity.Journal of clinical and translational science · 2024Article
- Spontaneous Scaling of a Primary Care Innovation in Real-Life Conditions: Protocol for a Case Study.JMIR research protocols · 2023Article
- Use of suboptimal control arms in randomized clinical trials of investigational cancer drugs in China, 2016-2021: An observational study.PLoS medicine · 2023Observational
- Institutional dashboards on clinical trial transparency for University Medical Centers: A case study.PLoS medicine · 2023Article
- Article
- N-of-1 trials: The epitome of personalized medicine?Journal of clinical and translational science · 2023Article
- Approaches for enhancing the informativeness and quality of clinical trials: Innovations and principles for implementing multicenter trials from the Trial Innovation Network.Journal of clinical and translational science · 2023Article
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.
Funding
Abstract
Prior studies suggest that clinical trials are often hampered by problems in design, conduct, and reporting that limit their uptake in clinical practice. We have described 'informativeness' as the ability of a trial to guide clinical, policy, or research decisions. Little is known about the proportion of initiated trials that inform clinical practice. We created a cohort of randomized interventional clinical trials in three disease areas (ischemic heart disease, diabetes mellitus, and lung cancer) that were initiated between January 1, 2009 and December 31, 2010 using ClinicalTrials.gov. We restricted inclusion to trials aimed at answering a clinical question related to the treatment or prevention of disease. Our primary outcome was the proportion of clinical trials fulfilling four conditions of informativeness: importance of the clinical question, trial design, feasibility, and reporting of results. Our study included 125 clinical trials. The proportion meeting four conditions for informativeness was 26.4% (95% CI 18.9-35.0). Sixty-seven percent of participants were enrolled in informative trials. The proportion of informative trials did not differ significantly between our three disease areas. Our results suggest that the majority of randomized interventional trials designed to guide clinical practice possess features that may compromise their ability to do so. This highlights opportunities to improve the scientific vetting of clinical research.
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.