Clinical Trial Finder

Domain Decisions

• Source database: ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 (https://clinicaltrials.gov/api/v2), the authoritative US registry mandated by FDAAA 801 (2007) and mirrored by WHO ICTRP. Chosen over EudraCT/EUCTR because it covers the largest global trial volume (>500 000 studies), provides a stable versioned REST API, and is the primary registry for FDA-regulated interventions. Reference: Zarin et al., NEJM 2011; 364:852, 860.

• Query field: query.cond (condition/disease field), not query.term (free-text across all fields). query.cond is indexed against MeSH descriptors by the NLM indexing pipeline, giving substantially better recall for condition queries than unstructured text search. Reference: ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 specification, https://clinicaltrials.gov/data-api/api.

• MeSH condition coding: MeSH IDs are read from derivedSection.conditionBrowseModule.meshes, the NLM-curated MeSH mapping that ClinicalTrials.gov computes internally during study indexing. This avoids a separate NLM API call and uses the same vocabulary that query.cond is indexed against, ensuring query/result consistency. Reference: NLM Medical Subject Headings, https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/.

• Max results: 20 trials per query by default (configurable with --max-results). Clinical actionability does not scale with result volume, a clinician reviewing >20 trials without eligibility pre-screening is unlikely to act on any. The default balances coverage with usability.

• Status display: All statuses returned are shown, no pre-filtering. Recruiting trials are highlighted; TERMINATED and WITHDRAWN trials are flagged with a distinct visual indicator and never omitted. Selective display of only active trials would introduce reporting bias and obscure negative evidence. Reference: Chan et al., PLoS Med 2004; 1:e62 (trial publication bias).