COVID-19-related research in Africa: a cross-sectional review of the International Clinical Trial Registration Platform (ICTRP)

• Published in: Current controlled trials in cardiovascular medicine 2021-10, Vol.22 (1), p.682-682, Article 682
• Main Authors: Edem, Bassey, Williams, Victor, Onwuchekwa, Chukwuemeka, Umesi, Ama, Calnan, Marianne
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Africa; Clinical trials; Coronaviruses; COVID-19; Cross-Sectional Studies; Epidemics; Humans; Intervention; Medical research; Medicine, Experimental; Observational studies; Pandemics; Registration; Registries; SARS-CoV-2; Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2; South Africa; Variables
• ISSN: 1745-6215; 1745-6215
• DOI: 10.1186/s13063-021-05621-x

The declaration of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a pandemic in early 2020, has seen an upsurge in research globally to fill gaps in the epidemiology of the SARS-CoV-2 virus impact on health care and clinical management, as well as possible prevention and treatment modalities. Published literature on the different types of COVID-19 research conducted globally is varied and is particularly limited in Africa. This study sets out to describe the COVID-19-related research registered and conducted on the African continent. This is a cross-sectional study of all COVID-19-related studies available in the WHO's International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP) repository. We extracted studies registered from March 1, 2020, to July 15, 2021. A descriptive analysis of the extracted data was performed, and the findings were presented. At extraction, a total of 12,533 COVID-19-related studies were listed on the ICTRP portal. We included 9803 studies, after excluding 2060 duplicate records and 686 records without a site/country. While 9347 studies (96%) were conducted outside of Africa, only 456 studies (4%) were conducted in the African continent, of which 270 (59.2%) were interventional studies, and 184 (40.4%) were observational studies. About 80% of the studies were conducted in Egypt and South Africa, and most of these involved testing of drugs and biologicals. The African continent hosts considerably fewer COVID-19-related research compared to other parts of the world. This may have implications on scientific evidence available for implementing COVID-19 control efforts. There is, therefore, a need for local funding and ownership of research projects and north-south collaboration in research.