If you are a patient looking to join a clinical trial, a clinician advising one, or a researcher trying to understand the trials that have been conducted for a particular medication, you may have encountered ClinicalTrials.gov. The website serves as a resource for clinicians and patients interested in trial participation as well as for researchers who want to understand the body of evidence for different conditions, assess signs of publication bias, and explore trial composition and representativeness. Since late 2007, federal law has required companies and researchers to register most Phase 2 to Phase 4 drug trials. Over 600,000 studies are listed on the site, which draws more than 3 million visitors each month and can be easily filtered based on patient age, sex, diagnosis, and ZIP code.
However, pregnant patients can’t easily identify studies for which they are eligible. ClinicalTrials.gov lacks structured data on whether pregnant or lactating people were included or can join a trial.
