MEDICINE Overview of Clinical Trials in Glomerulonephritis Neil Roy 1 Accepted: 12 April 2019 /Published online: 20 May 2019 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 Abstract The aims of this study are to describe the characteristics of clinical trials in glomerulonephritis listed in ClinicalTrials.gov and examine trends in study design, trial phases, location of trial, funding sources, and primary purpose in the last 10 years. A survey was conducted of ongoing clinical trials in glomerulonephritis registered in the ClinicalTrials.gov website using the advanced search option from 1/1/2008 to 12/31/2017. All trials with the search words were included except observational studies. Almost 59% of the trials were randomized, 11% were quadruple-masked, 9.6% were double- masked, and 3.4% were triple-masked. Of the 352 eligible trials, 26.7% were phase 3 trials, 19% were phase 4, 32.3% were phase 2, and 8.2% were phase 1. Of the trials, 21% were multinational and 42% were multicenter studies. The average number of participants in all the trials was 80. Funding data have shown that industry and other funding sources have contributed more towards glomerulonephritis trials when compared to federal agencies. The primary purpose of majority of the trials was treatment (92%). Preventive trials were only 11, basic sciences 6, and diagnostic 4. The year 2017 had the most number of trials which is very promising. The majority of trials were randomized and focused on treatment is very reassuring. The fact that there were more trials funded by industry and university rather than federal agencies is concerning. Keywords Glomerulonephritis . http://clinicaltrials.gov/ . Randomized clinical trials . Trends Introduction Nephrology has the lowest number of clinical trials among other specialties of internal medicine. Glomerulonephritis had the lowest number of clinical trials when compared to others such as urinary tract infection, diabetic nephropathy, and transplantation [1]. Several reasons have led to the lack of clinical trials in glomerulonephritis. The low occurrence of the disease makes it difficult to recruit patients for different studies. The lack of a standardized approach for glomerulone- phritis management also makes large multicenter trials diffi- cult to conduct. The high cost of trials can lead to a lack of collaboration. Each glomerulonephritis subtype can have dif- ferent definitions and endpoints [2]. A study done in 2002 showed that the majority of the trials were non-RCT and did not focus on interventional questions [1]. The lack of valid biomarkers and kidney-specific drug development tools have also contributed to this dearth [3]. Aim To analyze the trends in clinical trials in glomerulonephritis in the last 10 years, give a brief description of their phases, study designs, and suggest key areas for conducting high-quality trials in glomerulonephritis. Method A search was conducted on April 26, 2018, using the clinicaltrials.gov electronic database (http://clinicaltrials. gov/) with the following search strategy: proteinuria OR hematuria OR Amyloid nephropathy OR C3 glomerulopathy OR C3 glomerulonephritis OR alport syndrome OR Thin basement membrane disease OR FSGS OR focal segmental glomerulosclerosis OR IgA nephropathy OR Henoch This article is part of the Topical Collection on Medicine * Neil Roy neil.roy@joslin.harvard.edu 1 Nephrology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA SN Comprehensive Clinical Medicine (2019) 1:483–486 https://doi.org/10.1007/s42399-019-00068-3