Industry-Funded Trials Up 43% as NIH-Funded Trials Drop 24%

medscape


.....From 2006 to 2014, the number of industry-funded clinical trials increased by 1965 (43%), whereas the number funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) decreased by 328 (24%), according to new analysis.
The findings, based on data from ClinicalTrials.gov for trials entered into the system during the study period, appear in a research letter
Despite the drop in the number of NIH-funded trials, the researchers found that the overall number of newly registered trials doubled from 9321 in 2006 to 18,400 in 2014.
"My concern is that independent trials are on the decline and that means we have less high-quality data to inform public health that are not influenced by commercial interests," lead author Stephan Ehrhardt, MD, MPH, an associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, said in a university news release. "When I am doing a government-funded trial comparing two treatments, I start with the assumption that both treatments are equal. I don't have a vested financial interest in the outcome......