Duplicate subjects in clinical trials and professional patients are no longer rare anomalies—they are structural risks in modern clinical research. As trials scale globally and indications become increasingly crowded, these issues quietly undermine data integrity, inflate costs, and delay life-saving therapies.
A recent investigative article in Science brings this problem into sharp focus:
👉 Alzheimer’s drug developers accuse clinical trial sites of faking data
https://www.science.org/content/article/alzheimer-s-drug-developers-accuse-clinical-trial-sites-faking-data
A Trial Failure That Was Preventable
In 2023, T3D Therapeutics believed its experimental Alzheimer’s drug, T3D-959, showed promise. But once the trial was unblinded and participant-level data were reviewed, the results were biologically implausible: placebo patients appeared to improve, some enrolled subjects allegedly did not have Alzheimer’s disease, and others showed no detectable drug despite recorded dosing.
After excluding unreliable records, too few valid participants remained to support any conclusion—effectively collapsing a trial supported by roughly $35 million in private and federal funding.
Professional Patients and Fragmented Oversight
The Science investigation highlights a deeper issue: the same research sites participated in dozens of other Alzheimer’s trials, with FDA inspections documenting protocol violations and questionable enrollment practices.
This outcome is predictable in a fragmented system:
- Sponsors see only their own studies
- CROs lack cross-sponsor participant visibility
- Sites and participants operate across multiple trials simultaneously
Without a shared research subject database registry, professional patients and duplicate subjects in clinical trials can move undetected from study to study.
What Public Data Already Reveals
The scale of the problem is visible in publicly available resources:
- The National Institutes of Health (NIH) oversees and funds a vast portion of U.S. biomedical research, emphasizing participant protection and data integrity
👉 https://www.nih.gov - ClinicalTrials.gov, operated by NIH, lists hundreds of thousands of active and completed clinical trials worldwide, many competing for the same patient populations
👉 https://clinicaltrials.gov
While these platforms promote transparency, they are not designed to detect duplicate enrollment or professional patients at screening. They document trials—but they do not prevent the wrong subjects from entering them.
Industry Recognition: This Risk Is Real
Industry leaders are increasingly acknowledging the danger. In Clinical Trial Vanguard, experts outline the operational and scientific consequences of duplicate participants and emphasize the need for proactive safeguards:
👉 How to Avoid the Dangers of Duplicate Participants in Clinical Trials
https://www.clinicaltrialvanguard.com/executiveinterviews/how-to-avoid-the-dangers-of-duplicate-participants-in-clinical-trials/
The consensus is clear: prevention must occur before enrollment, not after a trial fails.
The Role of a Research Subject Database Registry
At Verified Clinical Trials, we address this gap directly.
Our global, cross-sponsor research subject database registry is designed to:
- Detect duplicate subjects in clinical trials at screening
- Identify professional patients across sponsors, protocols, and geographies
- Verify subject identity biometrically at enrollment and throughout the study
- Prevent corrupted datasets before the first dose is ever given
This approach focuses on Prevented Risk—the risks that never materialize because the wrong subject never enters the trial.
A Global, Preventable Failure
The T3D case is not just an Alzheimer’s story. It is a global warning about what happens when trials rely on siloed oversight in an era of overlapping protocols, aggressive recruitment, and financial incentives.
Clinical trials will always involve scientific uncertainty.
But duplicate subjects, professional patients, and undisclosed trial histories are operational risks that can be prevented—at scale—today.
Verified Clinical Trials is the only global, cross-sponsor research subject database registry operating at scale—designed to detect and prevent duplicate subjects, professional patients, and identity discrepancies from screening through study completion.
👉 Learn more at https://www.verifiedclinicaltrials.com