GlaxoSmithKline to set up comprehensive online clinical trials register

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has set up the first comprehensive register of pharmaceutical trials in the industry, two weeks after settling for $2.5m (£1.41m; €2.07m) a US lawsuit that accused the London based company of burying unfavourable results.

The lawsuit, launched by New York State's attorney general Eliot Spitzer, accused GSK of “repeated and persistent fraud,” alleging that the company suppressed data from at least four trials of the antidepressant paroxetine (marketed as Seroxat in Britain and as Paxil in the United States) (12 June, p 1395). The trials, which studied the drugs in adolescents, either showed no benefit over placebo or a slight …