Trials | Abstract | Drug safety assessment in clinical trials: methodological challenges and opportunities

Review

Drug safety assessment in clinical trials: methodological challenges and opportunities

Sonal Singh and Yoon K Loke

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Trials 2012, 13:138 doi:10.1186/1745-6215-13-138

Published: 20 August 2012

Abstract (provisional)

Randomized controlled trials are the principal means of establishing the efficacy of drugs. However pre-marketing trials are limited in size and duration and exclude high-risk populations. They have limited statistical power to detect rare but potentially serious adverse events in real-world patients. We summarize the principal methodological challenges in the reporting, analysis and interpretation of safety data in clinical trials using recent examples from systematic reviews. The principle challenges include the lack of an evidentiary gold standard, the limited statistical power of randomized controlled trials and resulting type 2 error, the lack of adequate ascertainment of adverse events and limited generalizability of safety trials that exclude high risk patients. We discuss potential solutions to these challenges. Evaluation of drug safety requires careful examination of data from heterogeneous sources. Meta-analyses of drug safety should include appropriate statistical methods and assess the optimal information size to avoid type 2 errors. They should evaluate outcome reporting biases and missing data to ensure reliable and accurate interpretation of findings. Regulatory and academic partnerships should be fostered to provide an independent and transparent evaluation of drug safety.

The complete article is available as a provisional PDF. The fully formatted PDF and HTML versions are in production.

http://www.trialsjournal.com/content/13/1/138/abstract