A call for more transparency of registered clinical trials on endometriosis

Guo SW, Sun‐Wei Guo, Sun-Wei Guo, Lone Hummelshøj, Lone Hummelshoj, David L. Olive, Olive DL, Bulun Se, S E Bulun, Serdar E. Bulun, Thomas M D'Hooghe, D'Hooghe TM, Thomas D'Hooghe, Thomas D’Hooghe, J.L.H. Evers, Johannes L. H. Evers
Human Reproduction · 2009 · vol. 24(6) , pp. 1247–1254 · doi:10.1093/humrep/dep045 · PMID:19264712 · PMC4102915 · W2110259055
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⚙ AI-generated summary by claude@2026-06, 2026-06-08 ⓘ

This paper highlights that 80% of completed phase II/III clinical trials for endometriosis have not published their results, advocating for increased transparency in endometriosis research.

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Abstract

In response to the pressing need for more efficacious and safer therapeutics for endometriosis, there have been numerous reports in the last decade of positive results from animal and in vitro studies of various compounds as potential therapeutics for endometriosis. A handful of these have undergone phase II/III clinical trials. Since the announcement of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors that mandated registration as a prerequisite for publication, 57 endometriosis-related clinical trials have been registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, an Internet-based public depository for information on drug studies. Among them, 25 are listed as completed, and 2 as suspended. There are 15 completed phase II/III trials, which evaluated the efficacy of various promising compounds. Yet only three of the 15 trials (20%) have published their results. The remaining 12 (80%) studies so far have not published their findings. We argue that this apparent lack of transparency will actually not benefit the trial sponsors or the public, and will ultimately prove detrimental to research efforts attempting to develop more efficacious and safer therapeutics for endometriosis. Thus we call for more transparency of clinical trials on endometriosis.

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Condition tags

endometriosis

MeSH descriptors

Clinical Trials, Phase II as Topic Clinical Trials, Phase III as Topic Endometriosis Publishing Clinical Trials, Phase II as Topic Clinical Trials, Phase III as Topic Endometriosis Female Humans

Citation neighborhood

Papers in the corpus that this work cites (lower rings, blue) and that cite this one (upper rings, green). Dot size scales with the paper's in-corpus citation count — bigger dot = more influential within the endo/adeno field. Click a dot to open that paper. [ expand to 2 hops ] — adds papers reached through this work's immediate citers/citees. Heavier; up to 60 extra dots.

References (39)

Cited by (36)

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