Access to ClinicalTrials.gov in the NLM Gateway

ccess to ClinicalTrials.gov will be added to the NLM Gateway in the Consumer Health category. ClinicalTrials.gov provides patients, family members, and members of the public current information about clinical research studies. It includes thousands of trials sponsored primarily by NIH, other Federal agencies, and the pharmaceutical industry.

A clinical trial is a research study to answer specific questions about vaccines, new therapies or new ways of using known treatments. Clinical trials (also called medical research and research studies) are used to determine whether new drugs or treatments are both safe and effective. Carefully conducted clinical trials are the fastest and safest way to find treatments that work in people.

The addition of ClinicalTrials.gov to the collections searched by the Gateway will benefit clinicians, patients and their families, researchers, librarians, and the public. With a single search, a user will retrieve information about relevant clinical trials as well as journal citations, books, MedlinePlus^®, and DIRLINE^® information about a topic. See the following search.

Access the NLM Gateway either through the NLM home page or by typing the URL: http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov. Enter skin cancer in the search query box of the Gateway as shown in Figure 1. Note that phrases should be placed in double quotes. Click on the "Search" button or use the "Enter" key to initiate the search.

 

The Results Summary page shows results in all categories. (See Figure 2.)

 

In the Consumer Health category, Gateway searches five collections: three MedlinePlus collections; ClinicalTrials.gov; and DIRLINE, a directory of health organizations. Click on the "Display Results" button next to Consumer Health.

The results from MedlinePlus display first. Go to the pull down menu for Pick a Collection, select ClinicalTrials.gov, and click on the "Jump to Collection" button. (See Figure 3.)

 

The Results page then displays items from the clinical trials collection. (See Figure 4.) Each item contains the title of the clinical trial, the condition(s) being studied, the URL that links to the ClinicalTrials.gov Web page, and the status of the trial.

 

For information on a particular clinical trial, click on the URL. A new browser window opens with the selected ClinicalTrials.gov page. (Figure 5)

 

More information on the Gateway can be found through links available on the left sidebar of each page. Additional information may be found from the ClinicalTrials.gov. If you have questions or concerns that are not addressed by this article or Gateway documentation, please click on the "Contact Us" button available at the bottom of each Gateway page to send a message.

By Andrea Demsey
MEDLARS Management Section
and
By Sonya Shooshan
Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications