Appealing for Efficient, Well Organized Clinical Trials on COVID-19

Yang Zhao; Yongyue Wei; Sipeng Shen; Mingzhi Zhang; Feng Chen

A total of 171 COVID-19-related interventional trials were identified (138 from ChiCTR and 33 from ClinicalTrials.gov). The registration date distribution of these trials was shown in Figure 1 . Of the trials registered at ChiCTR, 120 were approved by the institutional review boards. The 171 trials are classified into 4 categories based on treatment modalities, including chemical drugs (CDs), biological therapies (BTs), traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) treatments and other therapies. The characteristics of these trials were summarized in Table 1 More trials on TCM treatment use 2 or more primary endpoints (PEs) than those on CDs or BTs (57.6%, 39.4% and 40.5%, respectively). Some trials even have 6 or more PEs. The most 3 common used PEs are associated with clinical symptoms(73.1%), pathogen(29.2%) and lung function(27.5%). Trials on CDs have greater proportions of pathogen (41.0%) or fatality (18.0%) related PEs than the others. It is worth noting that these trials have registered over 300 distinct PEs totally.