Number of Patients Studied Prior to Approval of New Medicines: A Database Analysis
Clinical Trials Friday, March 22nd, 2013PLOS Medicine:
Background
At the time of approval of a new medicine, there are few long-term data on the medicine’s benefit–risk balance. Clinical trials are designed to demonstrate efficacy, but have major limitations with regard to safety in terms of patient exposure and length of follow-up. This study of the number of patients who had been administered medicines at the time of medicine approval by the European Medicines Agency aimed to determine the total number of patients studied, as well as the number of patients studied long term for chronic medication use, compared with the International Conference on Harmonisation’s E1 guideline recommendations. Read more