Reporting of retrospective registration in clinical trial publications: a cross-sectional study of German trials

Prospective registration has been widely implemented and accepted as a best practice in clinical research, but retrospective registration is still commonly found. We assessed to what extent retrospective registration is reported transparently in journal publications and investigated factors associated with transparent reporting.

We used a dataset of trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov or Deutsches Register Klinischer Studien, with a German University Medical Center as the lead centre, completed in 2009-2017, and with a corresponding peer-reviewed results publication. We extracted all registration statements from results publications of retrospectively registered trials and assessed whether they mention or justify the retrospective registration. We analysed associations of retrospective registration and reporting thereof with registration number reporting, International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) membership/-following and industry sponsorship using χ² or Fisher exact test.

In the dataset of 1927 trials with a corresponding results publication, 956 (53.7%) were retrospectively registered. Of those, 2.2% (21) explicitly report the retrospective registration in the abstract and 3.5% (33) in the full text. In 2.1% (20) of publications, authors provide an explanation for the retrospective registration in the full text. Registration numbers were significantly underreported in abstracts of retrospectively registered trials compared with prospectively registered trials. Publications in ICMJE member journals did not have statistically significantly higher rates of both prospective registration and disclosure of retrospective registration, and publications in journals claiming to follow ICMJE recommendations showed statistically significantly lower rates compared with non-ICMJE-following journals. Industry sponsorship of trials was significantly associated with higher rates of prospective registration, but not with transparent registration reporting.

Contrary to ICMJE guidance, retrospective registration is disclosed and explained only in a small number of retrospectively registered studies. Disclosure of the retrospective nature of the registration would require a brief statement in the manuscript and could be easily implemented by journals.