Research article

The activity of French Research Ethics Committees and characteristics of biomedical research protocols involving humans: a retrospective cohort study

Evelyne Decullier¹ , Véronique Lhéritier² and François Chapuis³

¹UF de méthodologie en recherche clinique, Département d'Information Médicale des Hospices Civils de Lyon, Lyon, France

²Hôpital Edouard Herriot, Lyon, France

³French National Conference of Research Ethics Committees, Lyon, France

author email corresponding author email

BMC Medical Ethics 2005, 6:9doi:10.1186/1472-6939-6-9

Published:	17 October 2005

Abstract

Background

Clinical trials throughout the world must be evaluated by research ethics committees. No one has yet attempted to clearly quantify at the national level the activity of ethics committees and describe the characteristics of the protocols submitted. The objectives of this study were to describe 1) the workload and the activity of Research Ethics Committees in France, and 2) the characteristics of protocols approved on a nation-wide basis.

Methods

Retrospective cohort of 976 protocols approved by a representative sample of 25/48 of French Research Ethics Committees in 1994. Protocols characteristics (design, study size, investigator), number of revisions requested by the ethics committee before approval, time to approval and number of amendments after approval were collected for each protocol by trained research assistant using the committee's files and archives.

Results

Thirty-one percent of protocols were approved with no modifications requested in 16 days (95% CI: 14–17). The number of revisions requested by the committee, and amendments submitted by the investigator was on average respectively 39 (95% CI: 25–53) and 37 (95% CI: 27–46), per committee and per year. When revisions were requested, the main reasons were related to information to the patient (28%) and consent modalities (18%). Drugs were the object of research in 68% of the protocols examined. The majority of the research was national (80%) with a predominance of single-centre studies. Workload per protocol has been estimated at twelve and half hours on average for administrative support and at eleven and half hours for expertise.

Conclusion

The estimated workload justifies specific and independent administrative and financial support for Research Ethics Committees.