# Registration Latency

In research transparency, does the time delay between trial initiation and public registration differ between African and high-income country trials? This analysis estimated registration latency from start-date-to-first-posted-date intervals for a sample of trials from Africa (23,873 total) and the United States (190,644 total) on ClinicalTrials.gov. Investigators reported median registration latency in days as the primary estimand for transparency compliance. African trials showed estimated median registration latency approximately forty percent longer than United States trials, with substantial variation across the 53 active African nations. Prospective registration — registering before enrolling the first participant as required by ICMJE — was achieved in an estimated forty-two percent of African versus eighty-two percent of American trials. Late registration creates windows for selective outcome reporting that undermine the integrity of the evidence base. These findings identify registration latency as a measurable transparency deficit. Interpretation is limited by the use of posted-date rather than verified enrollment-start date.

## References

1. Alemayehu C, et al. "Behind the mask of the African clinical trials landscape." Trials. 2018;19:519.
2. Drain PK, et al. "Global migration of clinical trials." Nat Rev Drug Discov. 2018;17:765-766.

## Note Block

- Type: research
- App: https://mahmood726-cyber.github.io/africa-e156-students/geographic-equity/dashboards/angle-6_registration-latency.html
- Code: https://github.com/mahmood726-cyber/africa-e156-students/blob/master/geographic-equity/code/angle-6-registration-latency.py
- Data: ClinicalTrials.gov API v2
- Date: 2026-04-05