NIH-Funded Trials Down, While Industry Trials Increase Save

(Reuters Health) – Every year since 2006 in the U.S., the amount of new medical research in humans funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has gone down, while the number of industry-funded trials has gone up, a new study shows. 

Clinical trials inform evidence-based prevention and treatment recommendations. The NIH and the pharmaceutical industry have been major funders of trials. In general, the pharmaceutical industry funds trials that test their own products, whereas the NIH’s funding strategies are not commercially motivated.

Analyzing the ClinicalTrials.gov database, researchers found that after trial registration became a requirement for publication in major scientific journals in 2005, the number of newly registered trials rose from 9,321 in 2006 to 18,400 in 2014. (Citation sourcehttp://buff.ly/1QqwXzi)

NIH-funded trials dipped slightly from 1,376 in 2006 to 1,048 in 2014, while industry trials increased from 4,585 to 6,550.

Adjusted for inflation, the NIH budget fell by 14 percent over this period, which may explain some of the decrease, according to the authors of the research published in JAMA.