AVMA Animal Health Studies Database

The AVMA Animal Health Studies Database allows the registration of prospective veterinary clinical studies that assess biomedical and/or animal health outcomes and that conform with all applicable national, state, provincial, and regional animal welfare review and oversight regulations. The AAHSD is a comprehensive veterinary clinical studies database, including studies in all disciplines of veterinary medicine and for all species of animals.

To submit a study, the user must first log-in to the AAHSD website. AVMA members can do so by entering their AVMA id and password. Persons who are not AVMA members must first create a user account before they can access the AAHSD. Once an account is established, users will have a ‘dashboard’ which will show all of the studies they have listed (or are working on for submission).

From the dashboard page, users can edit studies (including adding results to completed studies), return to submissions in progress, or submit new studies. All required fields must be completed before final submission of the study to the AAHSD is allowed. Once the study has been submitted, the user will receive a confirmation. After submission, the study will be reviewed to ensure authenticity, and that the fields have been completely and accurately filled in. Users may be contacted by AVMA staff or curators in the content area of the study for further information during this time. In most cases, users can anticipate that their study will be published on the AAHSD within a week or two after submission. The information required to submit a study for listing on the AAHSD was modified from the International Standards for a Clinical Trials Registry defined by the World Health Organization and largely mirrors the information required for listing on the Clinicaltrials.gov site for human clinical studies. The goal is to make the conduct of veterinary clinical studies as transparent and informative as possible to all interested parties, including owners, other investigators, and funding agencies. The AAHSD has made every effort to make the submission of this information as easy as possible, including the ability to copy information from previous pages, the use of drop-down boxes, etc.

For submission of a study to the AAHSD, users will want to have the following information:

• Scientific Title
• Public Title (not required if scientific title is suitable)
• Purpose of Study
• Diagnosis or condition being studied
• Intervention type
• Intervention name
• Control group Rx
• Outcome name(s)
• Outcome measurement(s)
• Outcome endpoint(s)
• Study type
  • Randomized?
  • Owner Masked?
  • Investigator Masked?
• Species
• Primary field of veterinary medicine
• Subcategories under primary field
• Inclusion criteria
• Exclusion criteria
• Possible Benefits of enrolling
• Potential Risks, if any known, of enrolling
• Type of Funding Source
• Name of funding source (not required)
• Recruitment status
• Start & End Dates
• Financial Incentives to owner for enrolling
• Study Locations
• Keywords (not required but users can enter other words that are not in the title or narrative of the study would help your study return in a search)

Additionally, submitters will be required to verify that the study is compliant with all applicable laws and regulations regarding the use of animals in research.

Submissions will not be accepted until all required fields have been completed. Users may save incomplete submissions and come back to complete them at a later time. Please note that information entered into fields is saved when advancing to the next page of the study submission, but information entered into fields will be lost if the user hits the 'previous' button before saving.

Once a user has filled in all of the required fields and clicks 'submit', they will get a message verifying that the submission has been received and is in review. The submission will then be scanned by AVMA staff to judge its' apparent authenticity before passing to a curator in the appropriate content area. The curator will review the submission to ensure that all fields have been completed with information appropriate for that field, and may contact you with questions. If there are significant errors in the submission, it may be rejected and returned to you for editing. Otherwise, the submission will be marked for publication on the AAHSD. The time from user submission to publication on the AAHSD may take several days.

Immediately after submission, the study may not be accessible for editing until it has passed out of the curator review process. Otherwise, users may access and edit their study in the AAHSD at any time by logging in to their user account and finding the study in their user dashboard. Click on the study to return to the study submission pages and fields and make the necessary edits, then click submit. The original version of the study will remain published while the edited version will return to an 'in review' status until marked for publication, either by AVMA staff or a curator in the relevant content area (dependent upon the significance of the edit). Once the edited version has been marked for publication, it will replace the previous version. However, in accordance with a registry function, historical versions of the study will be saved as a record of the conditions and conduct of that study.

Users are encouraged to submit the results of any study, once completed, to the AAHSD. Users may do so by the same process described above for editing a study - log-in to your account, find the relevant study in your user dashboard, and advance to the results section of the study submission form. Users may post results by one of several methods – either by copying and pasting, or directly entering text into a text box; or by providing a link to an abstract or publication; or by uploading a PDF document. Once results have been submitted, the study status will become 'study completed - results posted' to enable those searching the AAHSD for results to find the study.

The perceived value of the AAHSD to the public and the veterinary population will be adversely affected by out-of-date contents. Study descriptions that do not reflect current conditions and criteria for that study will contribute to a negative perception of the AAHSD. Studies that are not currently enrolling patients, either because they have been completed or discontinued, will frustrate owners and/or referring veterinarians searching for studies relevant to their animal’s condition. Studies submitted to the AAHSD should have an end date assigned of no longer than 1 year after the start date entered. Alerts will be sent to study contacts when a study is nearing its end date. Users will be able to extend the end date for a study, if applicable, at that time. However, users should update their study records as soon as possible after any change to the study recruitment status and study end date.

Review FAQ's about submitting studies or study results to the AAHSD.