Registry for veterinary clinical trials being considered

Published on
information-circle This article is more than 3 years old

The AVMA is set to study the feasibility of creating a national online registry for veterinary clinical trials.

The Executive Board approved a proposal from the AVMA Council on Research to form a working group tasked with determining the usefulness, costs, and benefits associated with developing and operating a publicly accessible database listing ongoing veterinary clinical trials.

No mechanisms currently exist on a national scale in veterinary medicine to connect candidate patients with clinical trials or to disseminate knowledge about them from study directors to veterinarians and their clients, according to the recommendation background. It goes on: “Thus, clinical trials in veterinary medicine are predisposed to failure simply because they are frequently underpowered to reach statistically significant results—they simply do not have enough patients to detect modest, but clinically significant, differences between treatment groups.”

Executive Board member Dr. Michael Newman, District III, discusses the potential advantages of a national online registry for veterinary clinical trials. (Photo by R. Scott Nolen)

Therefore, the background states, a searchable, actively maintained, publicly accessible clinical trials registry that was widely visible online would disseminate knowledge of, facilitate access to, and enhance enrollment of sufficient numbers of patients to ensure that potentially lifesaving therapies were adequately studied and assessed.

A veterinary clinical trials registry would not only benefit companion animals, their owners, and veterinarians but also have implications for one health, the council stated. Many spontaneously occurring diseases in animals also occur in humans; validation through a well-conducted and well-populated clinical trial would be of immense value in coordinating research with the National Institutes of Health on similar conditions in people, the council noted.

Members of the working group would ideally represent veterinary academic institutions with experience in clinical trials, private veterinary practice, pharmaceutical or device companies, veterinary partner associations, the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute, and the National Libraries of Medicine.