How to Search for Clinical Studies

Learn how to search for clinical studies from the BMU CTR home page, how to narrow your search results to get fewer studies, and how to find the clinical studies that are most important to you.

This guide is focused on the basic search tool. For more complex searches of BMU CTR data, an advanced search tool, Expert Search, is available. To learn more about using Expert Search, see Constructing Complex Search Queries.

Helpful features

Searching for clinical studies

Before you search

To help you find studies, think about the information that is most important to you. Are you interested in clinical studies about a certain disease, or close to a specific location? You can use the filters on the home page to do a basic search for clinical studies that best meet your interests. For the best results, use the right filter for the information you are interested in. For example, if you are looking for a clinical study about high blood pressure and you live in Dhaka; type "high blood pressure" in the Condition/disease filter, and "Dhaka" in the Location filter. If you are also looking for a study to join, change the Study status filter to "Recruiting and not yet recruiting studies." Avoid typing several terms in the same filter box.

Doing a basic search

Use the basic (default) search filters on the home page.

• Condition/disease: Use this field to search for studies related to a condition, disease, disorder, syndrome, illness, or injury (For example, breast cancer or high blood pressure). If you are searching for studies about more than one condition, enter each condition separately.
• Other terms: Use this field to narrow down a search using a term that doesn't fit in any of the other filters, such as the:
  • Name of the study investigator
  • BMU CTR Identifier (BDCTR ID)
• Intervention/treatment: Use this field to search for studies that use a specific drug, medical device, procedure, or lifestyle change (For example, radiation therapy or low-fat diet).
• Location: Use this field to search for studies by a facility, city, district, or country. For more details on using this filter, see Special instructions for using certain search filters.
• Study status: This filter will be set to search “All studies.” To search for studies that are looking for participants, change this filter to "Recruiting and not yet recruiting studies."

Some hints:

• You can use as many of the search filters as you want.
• Leave the Other terms filter blank unless you are looking for information that does not fit in the other filters.
• These filters work best using words spelled in English.
• When you are done entering filters, click on the Search button at the bottom of the menu.

Focus your search

If you have too many search results, you can add more filters to get fewer, more specific results. This will help you find clinical studies that match all your requirements.

To do this, you can add more filters before you search (from the home page) or after you search (from the Search results page).

• From the home page
  • Click More filters at the bottom of the home page to open additional filters.
  • Select the filters you want to apply. For example, you can search for studies that are looking for adults under Eligibility criteria, or you can look for studies with results under Study results.
  • Click the Search button to start your search.
• From the Search results page
  • Use the filter panel to filter by study status, phase, or study type. The number next to each filter option tells you how many clinical studies from your search include that option.
  • To use any of the other filters, click Refine search — all filters.
  • Each filter you apply appears as a chip above the results. Remove a chip to remove that filter.

You can select as many of the search filters as you want.

To start your search over:

• From any page on the website, click on the BMU CTR logo in the upper left corner.
• From the Search results page, click on Clear all.

Special instructions for using certain search filters

Basic search tool filters:

Location

To find studies in a certain place, type the name of a facility (such as a hospital), city, district, or country in the Location filter. Your search results will show the studies with a location that matches the words you typed.

If you are not interested in finding a study at a specific location, leave the Location filter blank.

Other terms

This filter is a tool to help focus your search for clinical studies using terms that don't fit in the other basic filters. For example, you can use this filter to search for studies with a specific word in the study title or study description. Other examples of terms you can use in this field include:

• The BDCTR ID
• The acronym for a study
• A biomarker or gene name
• An outcome measure

Avoid using this filter to type in several different search terms or terms that fit better in the other basic filters.

More filters:

Facility name filter

Use this filter to search for studies in a certain hospital or institution. Facility name is found under the More ways to search filters menu. The Facility name may be in English or another language.

From the home page, open the More filters menu. From the Search results page, click Refine search — all filters.

• Scroll down the list of filters to More ways to search to find the Facility name filter.
• Type the name of a facility, such as a hospital or institution.

Eligibility criteria filter

Use this filter to find studies that are looking for participants that are a certain Sex or Age, or that Accepts healthy volunteers.

Eligibility filters are found under the More filters menu on the home page, or under Refine search — all filters on the Search results page.

• Scroll down to Eligibility criteria.
• For Sex: Leave as All or change it to Female or Male to focus your search. Sex refers to biological sex.
• For Age: Use either of these two options:
  • Use Select ranges to choose Child, Adult, or Older adult.
  • Use Manually enter range: in the From and To filters, type an age in years. The From age must be less than the To age.
• Click the Search button.

Date range filters

Use these filters to find studies using dates related to the study record, such as when studies were started, updated, completed, or had results posted.

Date range filters are found under the More filters menu on the home page, or under Refine search — all filters on the Search results page.

• To enter a date range, choose a From date, a To date, or both, using the date fields.
  • Note: the From date must be earlier in time than the To date.
• Click the Search button.

More ways to search

Use these filters to find studies by:

• Title and/or title acronym: Use this to search for studies with certain words in the title, or to search for the acronym (the abbreviated name) of a study (for example, the RECOVER study).
• Outcome measure: Use this to search for the effect of a specific treatment or intervention (for example, decreased mortality, reduced pain, or increased heart rate).
• Sponsor and/or collaborator: Use this to search for studies by the organization or person who has control over the study (the sponsor) or by an organization that provides support for the study (a collaborator).
• Sponsor (lead): Use this to search for studies submitted by a specific sponsor.
• Study IDs: Use this to search for a study using the BMU CTR Identifier (BDCTR ID), the sponsor identification number, or an identification number assigned by a grant or another study registry.
• Facility name: Use this to search for studies located in a specific facility, such as a hospital or institution.
• Results submitted: Use this to search for studies for which the study sponsor or investigator has submitted summary results information, but the quality control (QC) review process has not finished.

For most filters, English spellings work the best.

General tips

Using phrases, NOT, AND and OR to help search:

• If the word or phrase you use for your search is a phrase of two words or more, put quotation marks around the words. This way the search tool will search the website for the phrase and not each individual word.
  • For example, to search for breast cancer, type “breast cancer” with quotation marks to find studies that contain that exact phrase.
  • Without quotation marks, the search will find studies that contain each word separately, anywhere in the study record. For example, a search for breast cancer (without quotation marks) will find studies that contain both the word "breast" and the word "cancer", even if they are not next to each other.
• To exclude a word or phrase from your search, type the word NOT (in all capital letters) before the term you don’t want to search for.
  • For example, a search for immunodeficiency NOT AIDS will find studies of immunodeficiencies that are not related to AIDS.
• To search for studies that contain two separate concepts, type the word AND (in all capital letters).
  • For example, a search for heart disease AND yoga will search for studies that include both heart disease and yoga.
• To search for studies that contain either of two terms, type the word OR (in all capital letters).
  • For example, a search for hypertension OR "high blood pressure" will find studies that contain either term.
• For more ways to combine search terms, see Constructing Complex Search Queries.

How BMU CTR matches your search terms:

• BMU CTR finds studies that contain the words you type (including as part of a longer word). It does not search for synonyms or other spellings, so if you don't find what you expect, try another name for the same thing (for example, "high blood pressure" and "hypertension").

Other general tips:

• Use either capital or lowercase letters to type your search term (the word or phrase you use for your search).
• For most filters, English spellings work the best.
• Start by filling in the filters for the information most important to you. You don’t have to fill in every filter on the home page or under Refine search — all filters on the Search results page. The search tool will find results using one or many search terms.
• Every search is saved in the page address, so you can bookmark or share a search.
• To learn more about the options for viewing, saving, and managing your search results, go to the How to Use Search Results page.

If you don't get the search results you expect:

• Try using fewer filters, search terms, or less specific terms, For example, try "arthritis" instead of "arthritis of the knee."
• Check the spelling of your search terms.
• Put each search term into the filter where it fits the best. For example, put a disease term in the Condition/disease filter and a drug term in the Intervention/treatment filter.
  • Limit the number of search terms you use in each filter.
• If you added a location, try a broader location (for example, a district or country instead of a facility) or a different location.
• If you don't get search results, it may be because there are no clinical studies that fit your search criteria.