New Website Provides Drug Study Results

News Note

By Lara Evans Bracciante

Originally published in Massage & Bodywork magazine, February/March 2005.

Responding to pressure for access to full disclosure on drug studies, the pharmaceutical industry has created a website, www.clinicalstudyresults.org, that includes summary results of all conducted research, even for those studies not published in medical journals. The drug trials are searchable by drug name, company name, disease state, indication, and study name. However, participation in the database is voluntary and only includes short abstracts rather than full data.

This move comes on the heels of cover-ups in clinical trials of pharmaceuticals such as Vioxx (a product of Merck) and Paxil (a product of GlaxoSmithKline). Early studies for Vioxx, an arthritis treatment, revealed the possibility of life-threatening side effects, such as stroke and heart attack. Clinical research regarding the antidepressant Paxil found an increased suicide risk in teenagers taking the drug. The results were not made public, and the drugs received approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Vioxx has since been pulled from the market, and Paxil now includes a warning to not prescribe to patients under the age of 18.