Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials: a four-year steady progress

Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (IRCT) commenced its activities as a member of WHO registry network on fourth of December 2008. We explored the progress it has made within its first four years both in terms of quantity of registrations as well as its timeliness.

We downloaded all the approved trial records until 22nd of September 2012 from the registry website. The number of registrations per calendar year was calculated and plotted over time. We assessed the timing of the registrations by categorizing them according to the date of registration in relation to the start date of recruitment into prospective, borderline prospective, borderline retrospective, and retrospective. We looked at the trends of timeliness of the registrations over time both according to registration year and the year that the recruitment had started.

There were 3145 valid registrations in IRCT until 22nd of September 2012. The number of trials increased steadily over the years from 26 in the last three months of 2008 and 182 in 2009 to 771 and 1138 in 2010 and 2011 respectively and is expected to reach 1310 in 2012. Among the 182 registrations that took place in 2009, only 16 % were prospective or borderline prospective while this figure was doubled in 2012. When we categorized registrations according to the year of recruitment, the increasing trend was more marked from 5 % and 15 % in 2009 and 2010 to 27 % and 62 % in 2011 and 2012.

IRCT has made an outstanding progress within four years from its establishment both in terms of quantity and timeliness. Registration movement has succeeded in getting the message across to the research community and clinical trial registration has now become an integral part of research sphere in Iran.