Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021 Oct 7;22(1):682.
doi: 10.1186/s13063-021-05621-x.

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

Bassey Edem #  1 , Victor Williams #  2 , Chukwuemeka Onwuchekwa  3 , Ama Umesi  4 , Marianne Calnan  5
Affiliations
Review

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

Bassey Edem et al. Trials. .

Abstract

Objective: 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.

Methods: 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.

Results: 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.

Conclusion: 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.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
List of variables included in the study
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
a Flowchart of studies. *16 studies added after data cleaning. See the “Results” section above for details. b Number of ongoing studies by continent
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Number of ongoing studies in the first fifteen African countries. *The number of studies per country reflects the number of studies conducted within that country irrespective of other sites (multicenter)
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Types of COVID-19 research interventions in Africa
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Guan W, Ni Z, Hu Y, Liang W, Ou C, He J, Liu L, Shan H, Lei CL, Hui DSC, du B, Li LJ, Zeng G, Yuen KY, Chen RC, Tang CL, Wang T, Chen PY, Xiang J, Li SY, Wang JL, Liang ZJ, Peng YX, Wei L, Liu Y, Hu YH, Peng P, Wang JM, Liu JY, Chen Z, Li G, Zheng ZJ, Qiu SQ, Luo J, Ye CJ, Zhu SY, Zhong NS, China Medical Treatment Expert Group for Covid-19 Clinical characteristics of coronavirus disease 2019 in China. N Engl J Med. 2020;382(18):1708–1720. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa2002032. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Mehta HB, Ehrhardt S, Moore TJ, Segal JB. Alexander GC. Characteristics of registered clinical trials assessing treatments for COVID-19: a cross-sectional analysis. BMJ Open. 2020;10(6):e039978. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2020-039978. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Juul S, Nielsen EE, Feinberg J, Siddiqui F, Jørgensen CK, Barot E, Nielsen N, Bentzer P, Veroniki AA, Thabane L, Bu F, Klingenberg S, Gluud C, Jakobsen JC. Interventions for treatment of COVID-19: a living systematic review with meta-analyses and trial sequential analyses (The LIVING Project) PLoS Med. 2020;17(9):1–25. doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1003293. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Hemkens LG, Janiaud P, Axfors C, van’t Hooft J, Saccilotto R, Agarwal A, et al. The worldwide clinical trial research response to the COVID-19 pandemic - the first 100 days. F1000Research. 2020;9:1–19. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Edem B, Onwuchekwa C, Wariri O, Nkereuwem E, Nkereuwem OO, Williams V. Trends in clinical trial registration in sub-Saharan Africa between 2010 and 2020: a cross-sectional review of three clinical trial registries. Trials. 2021;22(1):1–11. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13063-021-05423-1 - PMC - PubMed