Clinical trial registration, and publication in acupuncture studies: A systematic review

BACKGROUND: To research 1) how many acupuncture clinical trials are registered with the WHO International Clinical Trial Registry Platform (ICTRP) and what patterns they demonstrate, 2) publication of the articles of acupuncture clinical trials which were registered with ICTRP. METHODS: The search strategy using the ICTRP: Intervention: acupuncture; Recruitment status: All; Date of registration; from 1 Jan 1990 to 31 Dec 2018. We searched the indexed articles in PubMed using trial IDs on 25 Feb 2019. When the paper was published, we indicated the number of weeks from the date of registration with ICTRP to the date of publication in order to define time till the publication. We divided the whole period we analyzed into 6 periods of every 3 years and measured the proportion of publication and the time from the date of registration of each trial till its publication in each period by the Kaplan-Meier method. RESULTS: Forty-three countries/areas conducted at least one acupuncture clinical trial. The total number of registrations was 1758. China, the USA, and the Republic of Korea accounted for 61% of those registrations. The proportion of publication was 178/1758 10% for the fully published papers and 141/1758 8% for the protocol papers. CONCLUSIONS: The substantial increase of registrations by China, the Republic of Korea, Iran, Brazil, Japan was observed which may be attributed to improved awareness of the CONSORT statement. However, the fully published papers rate is low at 10%. The publication of results of acupuncture clinical trials should also be rigorously mandated.