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Getting the latest healthcare news for you
Industry-sponsored dermatology trials are finishing faster and getting published more than academic ones, raising concerns about gaps in clinical evidence. A new study found academic trials were half as likely to report completion and 34% less likely to publish results. This could leave dermatologists — and their patients — without answers to key real-world treatment questions.
A new study in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology reveals a striking gap between industry-sponsored and academic dermatology trials: industry-funded studies are more likely to be completed, published, and done faster. Analyzing nearly 5,000 trials conducted between 2015 and 2024, researchers found that academic trials were half as likely to report completion and about a third less likely to publish results compared to their industry-funded counterparts.
Industry trials also wrapped up 13 weeks sooner on average and tended to be larger, more randomized, and more often multicenter — structural advantages that likely reflect greater funding and infrastructure. Academic trials, meanwhile, more frequently used active comparators, the kind of head-to-head comparisons patients and clinicians actually want answered.
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Why it matters: When academic trials go unpublished, clinicians lose access to unbiased, comparative evidence that directly informs patient care. Experts are calling for better reporting plans from the outset of academic studies to close this growing knowledge gap.
