The Latin American Ongoing Clinical Trial Register (LATINREC).

1 Coordinator, Colombian Collaborating Branch of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network, Instituto de Investigaciones Fundación Universitaria Sánitas (II-FUS), Santa Fe de Bogotá, Colombia. Director, LATINREC. Send correspondence and reprint requests to: Ludovic Reveiz, Edificio de Consultorios Clínica Reina Sofía Diag 127 A # 3–48 cons 221, Santa Fe de Bogotá, Colombia; fax: (57) 1 6159435; e-mail: [email protected] 2 Coordinator, Colombian Collaborating Branch of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network, Unidad de Epidemiología Clínica, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Editorial Project Manager, LATINREC. Santa Fe de Bogotá, Colombia. 3 Iberoamerican Cochrane Center. Servei d’Epidemiologia Clinica i Salut Publica de l’Hospital de la Sant Creu i Sant Pau, Barcelona, Spain. 4 Coordinator, Argentine Collaborating Branch of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network (CIE, Academia Nacional de Medicina), Buenos Aires, Argentina. 5 Coordinator, Argentine branch of LATINREC. Argentine Collaborating Branch of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network (CIE, Academia Nacional de Medicina), Buenos Aires, Argentina. 6 Coordinator, Venezuelan Collaborating Branch of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network, Universidad de Carabobo, Valencia, Venezuela. 7 Coordinator-Director, International Health Central American Institute Foundation (Guatemala), Central American Collaborating Branch of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network; Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, Guatemala City, Guatemala. 8 Coordinator, Mexican Collaborating Branch of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network. Instituto Nacional de Salud de México, México, D.F., México. 9 Coordinator, Argentine Colombian Collaborating Branch of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network (IECS), Buenos Aires, Argentina. 10 Coordinator, Ecuatorian Collaborating Branch of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network, Quito, Ecuador. 11 Coordinator, Chilean Collaborating Branch of the Iberoamerican Cochrane Network, Unidad Medicina Basada en Evidencia, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile. Although the need to request researchers and research institutions to register clinical trials at their inception in a publicly and universally accessible register has been considered for years (1), it has only recently become a major issue (2–4). The community and scientific world have been confronting a complex and chaotic mass of information with conflicting messages about scientific evidence of efficacy and harms. A recent editorial by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) supported the need for a comprehensive trial register that meets several criteria (2). Additionally, the World Health Organization (WHO) is promoting an international initiative to develop a metaregister of controlled trials that would offer a one–stop search portal fed from existing registers and provide a unique identification number for clinical trials from certified registries that meet standard criteria for the exchange of essential trial data (4). Some important challenges are to develop a scheme to reduce duplication of work, inequitable funding of research, and neglected diseases; to avoid research on irrelevant issues or the measurement of irrelevant outcomes; and to enhance ethics and transparency. Research should be freely available to the public to avoid publication bias and selective reporting and to improve access to information on benefits and harms. Despite the intense interest in this topic there is a wide gap between theoretical postulates on trial registration and their implementation. This gap may be due to the absence of universal criteria for registration and differing interests of researchers, the pharmaceutical industry, funders, government, and society. In addition, registers are at different stages of development, particularly those in developing countries. The purpose of this article is to discuss the concepts of publication bias and prospective registration of clinical trials. Subsequently, we will consider Latin America as a source of ongoing trials and propose The Latin American Ongoing Clinical Trial Register (LATINREC) as a solution to mitigate