Clinical Trials API Client

A Python client for interacting with the ClinicalTrials.gov API v2. This library provides an easy-to-use interface for fetching and analyzing clinical trial data.

Installation

You can install the package via pip:

pip install pyctrials

Quick Start

from pyctrials import ClinicalTrialsAPI

# Initialize the client
client = ClinicalTrialsAPI()

# Fetch trials for a specific condition
trials = client.fetch_trials("Pompe Disease")

# Display results
print(f"Found {len(trials)} trials")
print(trials[['nct_id', 'brief_title', 'overall_status']].head())

Features

• Easy-to-use interface for ClinicalTrials.gov API
• Automatic pagination handling
• Retry mechanism for failed requests
• Data parsing and cleanup
• DataFrame-based output for easy analysis
• Comprehensive trial information including:
  • Trial identification
  • Status information
  • Sponsor details
  • Study design
  • Location information
  • And more...

Documentation

ClinicalTrialsAPI

The main class for interacting with the API.

client = ClinicalTrialsAPI(max_retries=5, retry_delay=5)

Parameters:

• max_retries (int): Maximum number of retry attempts for failed requests
• retry_delay (int): Delay between retry attempts in seconds

Methods

fetch_trials()

trials = client.fetch_trials(
    condition="Pompe Disease",
    status="RECRUITING",
    page_size=10
)

Parameters: other parameters will follow

• condition (str): Medical condition to search for
• status (str): Trial status filter (default: 'RECRUITING') (ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING ┃ COMPLETED ┃ ENROLLING_BY_INVITATION ┃ NOT_YET_RECRUITING ┃ RECRUITING ┃ SUSPENDED ┃ TERMINATED ┃ WITHDRAWN ┃ AVAILABLE ┃ NO_LONGER_AVAILABLE ┃ TEMPORARILY_NOT_AVAILABLE ┃ APPROVED_FOR_MARKETING ┃ WITHHELD ┃ UNKNOWN) --> visit https://clinicaltrials.gov/data-api/api#get-/studies for more info
• page_size (int): Number of results per page (default: 10)

Returns:

• pandas.DataFrame containing the trial data

Examples

Basic Usage

from pyctrials import ClinicalTrialsAPI

# Initialize client
client = ClinicalTrialsAPI()

# Fetch trials
trials = client.fetch_trials("Spinal Muscular Atrophy")

# Show unique sponsors
print(trials['sponsor'].unique())

# Get trials by phase
phase_counts = trials['phase'].value_counts()
print(phase_counts)

Error Handling

try:
    trials = client.fetch_trials("Rare Disease")
except Exception as e:
    print(f"An error occurred: {e}")

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Acknowledgments

• Thanks to ClinicalTrials.gov for providing the API
• Built with Python, pandas, and requests

Citation

If you use this package in your research, please cite:

@software{pyctrials,
  author = {Anass Tinakoua},
  title = {Clinical Trials API Client},
  year = {2024},
  publisher = {GitHub},
  url = {https://github.com/atinak/pyctrials}
}