THE CLINICAL TRIALS LANDSCAPE IN TURKEY: AN EVALUATION OF THE CLINICALTRIALS.GOV DATABASE

Abstract

Objective: Clinical trials are essential tools for improving scientific knowledge and public health. With this work, it is aimed to evaluate the clinical trials landscape in Turkey. Method: To evaluate the landscape of clinical trials in Turkey, all clinical trials registered on or before the date of 20.06.2019 in the ClinicalTrials.gov database were used. The registered clinical trials were filtered by study type, study phase, funder type, current status of clinical trials, and location. In addition, the number of clinical trials in Turkey was compared with some countries which were selected based on population and number of trials. Results: In Turkey, the total number of registered clinical trials was 3880. The majority of these trials (%79.4) were interventional studies. The majority of phase trials were phase III studies, of which the vast majority were sponsored by industry. The numbers of completed and currently participants recruiting trials were 2245 and 722, respectively. Not only in Turkey, but in all countries, the numbers of clinical trials with unknown status and phase studies without defined phases were higher in trials were not funded by industry. When the numbers of first registered clinical trials were evaluated between the years of 2009 and 2018, a considerable increase was seen. The number of clinical trials in Turkey was 5 or 6 fold less than in developed countries with a comparable population such as Germany, France, and United Kingdom. Conclusion: With this work, it was shown that the number of clinical trials in Turkey is still not as expected. In order to take its rightful place in the world, Turkey should continue to make improvements, use its potential and increase awareness in the field of clinical trials