A study sought to elucidate on influential institutions in the field of headache and identified major organizations conducting clinical trials in migraine research. The results were published in Frontiers in Neurology.

In this analysis, the researchers used the ClinicalTrials.gov application programming interface to procure studies focused individuals with migraine from February 29, 2000 to July 28, 2020. They assessed the studies for the following: host organization, study type, primary purpose, intervention model, and allocation. In total, 921 entries encompassing 423 organizations were included in the analysis.

According to the results, 32 organizations produced five or more entries each, and 40% of all entries. Most, entries (86%), were interventional studies while 13.6% were observational studies. The researchers observed that the most common study design had a randomized allocation of participants. The most frequent primary purpose was treatment (62.4%) followed by prevention (13%). Additionally, there were 56.9% parallel assignment models, 15.2% single group assignment models, and 12.4% crossover assignment models.

A minority of organizations contribute to a significant number of registrations of clinical migraine trials, suggesting that clinical research in migraine is oligarchic,” the researchers concluded. “The most common study is interventional and randomized, with parallel assignment of participants with treatment as the primary purpose. This likely reflects the need to evaluate novel putative pharmacological medications.”

Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34659097/

 

Keywords: clinical research, clinical trial design, headache, migraine, migraine research