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ctrdata: information on clinical trial registers

Source: R/ctrdata-registers.R
ctrdata-registers.Rd

Information on registers of clinical trials from which package ctrdata can retrieve, aggregate and analyse protocol- and result-related information as well as documents, last updated 2024-12-27.

1 - Overview

  • EUCTR: The EU Clinical Trials Register holds more than 44,200 clinical trials (at least one investigational medicinal product, IMP; in the European Union and beyond; results of trials continue to be added)

  • CTIS: The EU Clinical Trials Information System was launched in January 2023 and holds more than 8,150 publicly accessible clinical trials (to automatically get CTIS search query URLs, see here)

  • CTGOV2: ClinicalTrials.gov holds more than 520,500 interventional and observational studies

  • ISRCTN: The ISRCTN Registry holds more than 25,750 interventional and observational health studies

2 - Notable changes

CTGOV "classic" was retired on 2024-06-25; ctrdata subsequently translates CTGOV queries to CTGOV2 queries. The new website ("CTGOV2") can be used with ctrdata since 2023-08-27. CTIS was relaunched on 2024-06-17, changing the data structure and search syntax, to which ctrdata was updated. CTIS can be used with ctrdata since 2023-03-25. More information on changes: here.

3 - References

MaterialEUCTRCTGOV2ISRCTNCTIS
Aboutlinklinklinklink
Terms & conditions, disclaimerlinklinklinklink
How to searchlinklinklinklink
Search interfacelinklinklinklink
Expert / advanced searchlinklinklinklink
Glossary / related informationlinklinklinklink
FAQ, caveats, issueslinklinklinklink
Data dictionaries / definitions / structure referencelinklink, linklinklink
Example*linklinklinklink

4 - Example and ctrdata motivation

*The example is an expert search for interventional trials primarily with neonates, investigating treatments for infectious conditions. It shows that searches in the web interface of most registers are not sufficient to identify the trials of interest:

  • EUCTR retrieves trials with neonates, but not only those exclusively in neonates.

  • ISRCTN retrieves studies with interventions other than medicines.

  • CTIS retrieves trials that mention the words neonates and infection. (To show CTIS search results, see here)

To address this issue, trials can be retrieved with ctrLoadQueryIntoDb into a database collection and in a second step trials of interest can be selected based on values of relevant fields, for example:

  • EUCTR field f115_children_211years and other age group criteria

  • ISRCTN field interventions.intervention.interventionType for type of study

  • CTIS fields ageGroup and authorizedApplication.authorizedPartI.medicalConditions.medicalCondition

ctrdata supports users in identifying fields with functions dbFindFields and ctrShowOneTrial.

Author

Ralf Herold ralf.herold@mailbox.org