The Decline of Clinical Trials in Central and Eastern Europe

Currently, 66% of clinical trials are conducted in North America, Western Europe and Australia.  The U.S. hosts 49% of clinical trial sites and generates approximately 40% of clinical data.  Other regions have arisen in recent years.  The main reasons behind this globalization trend are the availability of highly skilled professionals in new research markets, lower costs, faster patient recruitment that allows for earlier drug application approvals and concentrations of huge populations for future drug sales.

Central and Eastern Europe participates in about 13% of clinical trials conducted in Europe and in about 5% of those conducted globally.

However, this number was as high as 7.5% in 2006. In relative terms, the decline here goes as far as 28% over the last six years. It has been observed in all countries of this region, especially Poland, Croatia and the Baltic states.

In this Applied Clinical Trials article, Thomas Novak, Maxim Belotserkovsky, and Ginny Payeur look at whether this surprising finding represents a fluctuation or a new trend.