Five-Year Trend in the Number of Dermatologic Clinical Drug Trials Registered on ClinicalTrials.gov.

BACKGROUND

There is a reported global decrease in the number of clinical trials conducted in recent years. We aimed to determine if this declining trend can be extrapolated to dermatologic clinical trials.

METHODS

We conducted a query of ClinicalTrials.gov for dermatologic clinical trials from 2009 to 2013 for 6 common skin conditions: acne, psoriasis, rosacea, eczema and atopic dermatitis, actinic keratosis, and skin cancer. Results were sorted by condition and number of study subjects. This study did not involve any participants apart from the researchers.

RESULTS

Although there is an increasing trend in the number of trials performed annually, the results were not significant (P =.08). The average number of patients per study has not significantly changed (P =.12), but there was a significant increase in the number of large studies (201+ subjects) conducted over time (P =.002). Although there was significant variation based on dermatologic condition studied (global statistic P=.01), only skin cancer demonstrated a significant change in the number of studies registered annually (β=10.6 studies/year, P =.04).

CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: The sky does not appear to be falling, at least not yet, with regard to continued development of treatments for patients with skin disease.