Why (not) go east? Comparison of findings from FDA Investigational New Drug study site inspections performed in Central and Eastern Europe with results from the USA, Western Europe, and other parts of the world

Since the mid-1990s, investigational sites in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have been increasingly utilized by pharmaceutical companies because of their high productivity in terms of patient enrolment into clinical trials. Based on the FDA’s publicly accessible Clinical Investigator Inspection List, we present an analysis of findings and outcome classifications from FDA inspections during Investigational New Drug (IND) studies and compare the results for the CEE region to those from Western European countries and the USA. Data from all 5531 FDA clinical trials inspections that occurred between 1994 (when the FDA first performed inspections in CEE) and the end of 2010 were entered into the database for comparative analysis. Of these, 4865 routine data audit (DA) inspections were analyzed: 401 from clinical trials performed in Western Europe, 230 in CEE, 3858 in the USA, and 376 in other countries. The average number of deficiencies per inspection ranged between 0.99 for CEE and 1.97 in Western Europe. No deficiencies were noted during 16.6%, 39.0%, and 21.5% of the inspections in Western Europe, CEE and USA, respectively. The percentages of inspections after which no follow-up action was indicated were 36.9% for Western Europe, 55.7% for CEE, and 44.3% for US sites. CEE was also the region with the lowest percentage of inspections that required official or voluntary action. On the basis of FDA inspection data, the high productivity of CEE sites appears to be accompanied by regulatory compliance as well as by data quality standards that are not inferior to those in Western regions.