Clinical Pharmacology in India – A systematic review of research in the past 5 years

Abstract

The Indian National Science Academy has published  two Status Reports on Pharmacological Research (1984 & 2000). The International Council for Science (ICSU) National Committee for Pharmacology has commissioned the third status report on Pharmacological Research in India covering the last 5 years. This systematic review covers the status of research in Clinical Pharmacology (excluding pharmacogenomics, pharmacovigilance, pharmaco-economics). We searched PubMed, Scopus and Google Scholar to extract published articles in the various sub-categories like drug discovery & development, clinical trial methodology & biostatistics, medical education, ethics, drug utilization research, therapeutic drug monitoring, pharmacodynamics, therapeutics and systematic reviews. This report presents a summary of the published research in the last 5 years, discusses some of the challenges and how some steps can be taken to raise the standards of clinical pharmacological research in India.