rfhb/ctrdata

Aggregate and analyse information on clinical trials from public registers

ctrdata's Issues

Feature request: Include other trial data fields from Eu clinical trials register

Hi, would it also be possible to include the following fields for analysis?

Start Date

Results version number, First version publication date, This version publication date, Other versions, Summary report(s) (Yes/No)

Trial records not imported into database - stack error

Users may have encountered errors such as the following:

Error : C stack usage 8329845 is too close to the limit or

Error in rcpp_read_ndjson_file(normalizePath(ndjson), get_download_mode(), Not compatible with STRSXP

when using package ctrdata function ctrLoadQueryIntoDb() executing the step (3/3) Importing JSON records into database.... The cause may be highly complex JSON data that need to be processed and that exceed the available stack.

Potential solutions increase the stack size and can be found here for

• macOS: https://stackoverflow.com/a/50945798
• Linux: https://stackoverflow.com/a/14719448/8947989

The occurence of this issue cannot be prevented by code in package ctrdata because it depends on the complexity of data in a trial record as retrieved from one of the register. With the suggestions above, users may configure their operating system to handle such complex datsa.

CTGOV changed website layout

ClinicalTrials.Gov just made the previous beta website layout now the default layout. Links to the previous website start now with https://classic.clinicaltrials.gov/. Search parameters are different. ctrdata is being updated to handle the situation.

Error: Invalid numeric literal at line 1, column 913610

Thanks for the report. Import of NDJSON fails:

library(ctrdata)
q <- "https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/ctr-search/search?query=&dateFrom=2023-01-14&dateTo=2024-01-24"
db <- nodbi::src_sqlite(dbname = "sqlite_file.sql", collection = "dbe")
ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(queryterm = q, con = db)

Returns:

* Checking trials in EUCTR...
Retrieved overview, multiple records of 563 trial(s) from 29 page(s) to be downloaded (estimate: 30 MB)
(1/3) Downloading trials...
Note: register server cannot compress data, transfer takes longer (estimate: 100 s)
Download status: 29 done; 0 in progress. Total size: 45.60 Mb (100%)... done!             
(2/3) Converting to NDJSON (estimate: 10 s)...
(3/3) Importing records into database…
Error: Invalid numeric literal at line 1, column 913610

ctrGetQueryUrlFromBrowser stops instead of returning NULL

This happens if the URL is not from CTGOV or EUCTR, but the intention is to use the function for parameter checking so there should be a value returned for any input.

Erroneous entries in register fields (e.g. date) not flagged with dbGetFieldsIntoDf()

Function dbGetFIeldsIntoDf() includes typing of certain fields, such as "n_date_of_ethics_committee_opinion" as calendar date. However, when a register record has a non-conforming entry in such a field (e.g., "2020-88-99") the user is not made aware that the typing in this function just replaces this field with NA, silently. Reported by @florianlasch .

When downloading result PDFs from EUCTR, sometimes get error of file not found

The reason is because the file name is too long to be unzipped. Since the pdf is named after the study the study name may be very very long.

failing if path to package contains space

ctrdata::ctrLoadQueryIntoDb() failed when package ctrdata is install in a path that contains spaces in its name, aborting with an error indicating a file was not found.

Shiny app

By any chance, do you know of any shiny app that utilizes this package? While attempting to create one, I found it works perfectly on my local machine, but it fails if published shinyapps.io.
The error appears to originate from ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(), so I suspect this could be linked to the necessary command-line tools.

Recruitment fields for trial on ClinicalTrials.Gov not available through ctrdata?

Observation

• Field "Original Enrollment (Estimated)" as shown on https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03594955?tab=table#recruitment-information is not available after using ctrLoadQueryIntoDb() from package ctrdata for this trial.
• This is issue has been reported by a user who has a use case for this and possibly other fields with the same issue.

Analysis

• Currently ctrdata accesses the endpoint /studies of the API specified at https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/data-api/api. This endpoint provides (only) the latest version of trial data that are available. For trials that started or completed enrollment (recruitment), these API endpoint data include only the actual number enrolled.
• The estimated, originally planned number to be enrolled ("Original Enrollment (Estimated)") is only in a historical version of the trial record, in this case https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT03594955?tab=history&a=1#study-design-card

Solution

• Inspecting the network traffic for this last URL, additional endpoints were found to be accessed that could be used for additionally retrieving data for historical versions of a trial record. However, these endpoints have to be accessed one-by-one for each trial and each version of a trial, likely impacting performance notably.
• An implementation will be started for ctrdata function ctrLoadQueryIntoDb() to obtain an additional parameter, e.g. ctgov2history = {1,-1,n,n:m,TRUE}, which triggers the additional retrieval of a specific (first, last-but-on), a certain number, a range, or all historic versions for trials that are retrieved.
• This applies only to CTGOV2 because no corresponding endpoint is available for other registers
• The data model in ctrdata for a given trial could have an additional object history, e.g.

{
"_id":"NCT03594955", 
"record_last_import": "2024-04-24 20:21:22"
"register": "CTGOV2", 
"title": "The study's full title", 
"protocolSection": {"designModule": {"enrollmentInfo": {"count": 7, "type": "ACTUAL"}}}, 
...
"history": [
 {
 "history_version: {
   "version_number": 1, 
   "version_date": "2020-21-22 10:11:12"
 },
 "title": "The study's original title",
 "protocolSection": {"designModule": {"enrollmentInfo": {"count": 77, "type": "ESTIMATED"}}},
 ...
 }
]
}

Fields generated by ctrdata ("_id", "record_last_import", "register", "history", "history_version", "version_number", "version_date") follow snake_case formatting; other field names are as retrieved from the respective register.

Example code doesn't work

I am getting this:

Error: ctrGetQueryUrlFromBrowser(): 'url' and / or 'register' is not a single character string.

while following the example code

ctrOpenSearchPagesInBrowser(input = "cancer&age=under-18",register="EUCTR")
q <- ctrGetQueryUrlFromBrowser()
db <- nodbi::src_sqlite(
dbname = "sqlite_file.sql",
collection = "test"
)

ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(
queryterm = q,
only.count = TRUE,
con = db
)$n

I have windows 10 64 bit, R4.0.3.

CTGOV2 API call does not filter by study sponsor

Consider the following example. With the old API, the filter is respected, whereas with the new one, all studies would be downloaded.

library("tibble")
library("ctrdata")

q1 <- tibble(`query-term` = "spons=Pfizer", `query-register` = "CTGOV")

ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(
  queryterm = q1,
  only.count = TRUE
)$n
# 5639

q2 <- tibble(`query-term` = "spons=Pfizer", `query-register` = "CTGOV2")

ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(
  queryterm = q2,
  only.count = TRUE
)$n
# 470145

trial ids are incompletely deduplicated with preferregister="EUCTR"

ctrdata::dbFindIdsUniqueTrials() produces non-unique and incompletely deduplicated trial ids with the default setting of preferregister. It works correct with preferregister="CTGOV".

Information on placebo from EUCTR wrongly nested into IMP

When converting information downloaded from EUCTR, any information on placebo was associated with (nested into) the last defined IMP instead of being presented as separate fields.

Loading to MongoDB fail

Hi,

This is my first time using r and mongo so please for give me if there's something I've missed.
I get error when importing into mongoDB, object; 'ids' not found.

e.g.
ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(queryterm = q)

• Downloading trials from EUCTR:
  Retrieved overview, 1 trial(s) from 1 page(s) to be downloaded.
  (1/3) Downloading trials (max. 10 page[s] in parallel):
  p 1-1 .

"Search should return 3 results in this example"

(2/3) Converting to JSON ...
(3/3) Importing JSON into mongoDB ...
Error in dbCTRLoadJSONFiles(dir = tempDir, mongo = mongo) :
object 'ids' not found
In addition: Warning message:
In system(euctr2json, intern = TRUE) :
running command 'cmd.exe /c c:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe

I've taken a look at the dbCTRLoadJSONFiles script to see if I could make any sense if the issue but I'm too novice at this point. https://rdrr.io/cran/ctrdata/src/R/main.R#sym-dbCTRLoadJSONFiles

Kind regards,

Joe

====================================================
I'm running under the following setup;

R version 3.5.3 (2019-03-11)
Platform: x86_64-w64-mingw32/x64 (64-bit)
Running under: Windows 10 x64 (build 17134)

attached base packages:
[1] stats graphics grDevices utils datasets methods
[7] base

other attached packages:
[1] mongolite_2.0.1 ctrdata_0.18

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] httr_1.4.0 clipr_0.5.0 compiler_3.5.3 magrittr_1.5
[5] R6_2.4.0 tools_3.5.3 curl_3.3 Rcpp_1.0.1
[9] xml2_1.2.0 jsonlite_1.6 rvest_0.3.3 openssl_1.3
[13] askpass_1.1

===
CYGWIN_NT-10.0 DESKTOP-12J62K2 3.0.6(0.338/5/3) 2019-04-06 16:18 x86_64
mongodb-win32-x86_64-2008plus-ssl-4.0.8-signed

Feature request: extract EUCTR results data

As far as I can tell, this is not supported, correct?

ctrLoadQueryIntoDb works on windows but not ubuntu

ctrLoadQueryIntoDb works on windows machine when searching EUCTR, but fails when I try the code on a ubuntu server with the following error.

• Found search query from EUCTR: query=2020-001921-30+OR+2020-001739-28+OR+2020-001891-14+OR+2020-001823-15
• Checking trials in EUCTR: Error : Host https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/ does not respond, cannot continue.

Similar searches with other queries don't work. Searching CTGOV works fine on both machines. I've updated R and all packages with no success, and tried the dev version of ctr data. Other API calls work from the ubuntu machine, (as does using the CTGOV registry). I've checked sed, php, cat, perl are installed on the ubuntu machine, no luck. I'm using a sqlite database if that makes any difference.

Any thoughts on what might be the issue?

Manual input of trial IDs instead of search functions

I have a specific requirement for my workflow: i would need to manual input the trial IDs to populate the database, instead of using the package's built-in functions to search the websites. I didn't find how to do this in the available documentation. Is it possible to do that with this package?

dbFindIdsUniqueTrials() lacks identifiers in rare case

When using dbFindIdsUniqueTrials(), the function returns no unique identifier when the trial has a exactly one record from a EU Member State and exactly one third-country record.

dbFindIdsUniqueTrials() may fail if fields missing in database

dbFindIdsUniqueTrials() obtains by calling dbGetVariablesIntoDf() from the database the fields needed for deduplication. dbGetVariablesIntoDf() would stop if a field was missing from all records in the database, such as may occur with few trial records. This led to dbFindIdsUniqueTrials() failing, silently, and no identifying duplicates.

MedDRA comment in Condition field from EUCTR

Parsing of EUCTR protocol-related information incorrectly inserts the section header "MedDRA Classification" into the preceding field (E.1.1).

invalid numeric literal when accumulating information in database

This concerns loading certain clinical trial information from CTIS.

(3/5) Downloading and processing additional data:
publicevents, summary, layperson, csr, cm, inspections, publicevaluation
Error: Invalid numeric literal at line 1, column 37048550

9. jqr_feed(program, json)
8. writeLines(buf, out, useBytes = TRUE)
7. callback(jqr_feed(program, json))
6. jqr.connection(x, query = query, flags = flags, out = out)
5. jq.connection(file(fPartIPartsIINdjson), " { ctNumber: .ctNumber, applicationIds: [ .applications[] | .id ] } ",
flags = jqr::jq_flags(pretty = FALSE), out = fApplicationsJson)
4. jqr::jq(file(fPartIPartsIINdjson), " { ctNumber: .ctNumber, applicationIds: [ .applications[] | .id ] } ",
flags = jqr::jq_flags(pretty = FALSE), out = fApplicationsJson) at ctrLoadQueryIntoDbCtis.R#373
3. (function (queryterm = queryterm, register, euctrresults, euctrresultshistory,
documents.path, documents.regexp, annotation.text, annotation.mode,
only.count, con, verbose, queryupdateterm) { ...

dbGetFieldsIntoDf() empty for fields with multibyte characters using src_sqlite() under Windows

The issue is noticed when dbGetFieldsIntoDf() does not return any data for a specified field, and this occurs with a database connection using src_sqlite(), under Windows only, when the field's JSON data contain multibyte characters. This was fixed with ropensci/nodbi#33.

Workarounds, for the moment:

• use devtools::install_github("rfhbi/nodbi@sqlite-fix-multibyte").
• use a Mongo instead of an SQLite connection
• use a different operating system

How to cite this package?

Hi!
Do you have any preference regarding how this package should be cited?

firstreceived_results_date is NA in non-English locale

Reproducible example:
Sys.setlocale("LC_TIME", "de_DE"); ctrdata::ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(queryterm = "2012-004228-40", register = "EUCTR", euctrresults = TRUE
leads to field "firstreceived_results_date" being an empty string in the mongo data base collection.

Fixed with commit 4b02df6.

When downloading results from EUCTR, sometimes fails due to error with invalid argument

if (any(!saved)) {
                warning("Could not save ", nonXmlFiles[!saved],
                        call. = FALSE, immediate. = TRUE)
              }

the variable saved is an invalid argument. After commenting out this clause it worked.

helper function cygwin install proxy

Windows 7, 64 Bit

Error in if (tmp$AutoConfigURL != "") { : argument is of length zero

Variable fields in EUCTR are not always retrieved

Some fields in EUCTR change their name depending on certain characteristics. For example, E.8.4 can have two names; "The trial involves multiple sites in the Member State concerned" or "Will this trial be conducted at multiple sites globally?", depending on whether the trial record pertains to countries outside the European Economic Area (hence, a "/3RD" protocol).
Apparently, the package is not retrieving the field E.8.4 if it falls under the '/3RD' protocol. Is there a potential fix for this issue?
Thank you for your valuable work!

Does not work when proxy is used to connect to the internet

Main functions in the package use internet connections for retrieval of trial information over the internet. These functions do not work and raise a time out error if internet connections have to use a proxy. This is usually the case in corporate environments. Better support for automated detection and handling should be included in the ctrdata package (which uses package curl, which has functions for handling proxies but does not do this automatically).

"Subscript out of bounds" when downloading records from more than 1 page

I got the latest version a few days ago and there seems to be an issue downloading records when there's more than 1 page of results.

Some EUCTR records not properly transformed to JSON

When an IMP is declared to exist but is not presented with any information, the JSON array of IMPs is not properly constructed and left without closing brackets. Subsequently, none or only some of the records are imported into mongodb.

Error message printed with ctrLoadQueryIntoDb()

This issue is opened to collect and document issues with content from registers that has errors and where package ctrdata cannot mitigate the errors. Commands and output are in the next sections.

db <- nodbi::src_sqlite(dbname = "db.sqlite", collection = "errorTrials")
ctrdata::ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(queryterm = "2020-000876-40", register = "EUCTR", verbose = TRUE, con = db)

The messages to the user from the above command are ending with,

Error: lexical error: invalid char in json text.
                           { "_id": "{"e521_timepoints_of_evaluation_o
                     (right here) ------^

The published trial record included in section "E.5.2 Secondary end point(s)" the following content, which since opening the issue has been corrected in the register:

- Toxicity
- Compliance to treatment
EudraCT Number: 2020-000876-40
Sponsor Protocol Number: IJB-REGINA-2020
ClinicalTrials.gov Number: NCT04503694
[...]

The field contains in the register specific identifiers that are not expected in a field and which are used by ctrdata for splitting downloaded information on a series of trials. This error in content in the register is not readily fixable by ctrdata.

Certain result documents are causing an error: "No such file or directory"

Please see the below code to reproduce:

 dbc <- nodbi::src_mongo(collection = "test2", db = "db")
 q <- "https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/ctr-search/search?query=2014-001203-50"
 ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(
   queryterm = q,
   con = dbc,
   euctrresults = TRUE,
   documents.path = "d",
   verbose = TRUE,
 )

• Found search query from EUCTR: query=2014-001203-50
  Checking helper binaries: done
• Checking trials in EUCTR...
  DEBUG: queryterm is https://www.clinicaltrialsregister.eu/ctr-search/search?query=2014-001203-50
  Retrieved overview, multiple records of 1 trial(s) from 1 page(s) to be downloaded (estimate: 0.05 MB)
  Created directory d
  (1/3) Downloading trials...
  Note: register server cannot compress data, transfer takes longer, about 0.5s per trial
  Download status: 1 done; 0 in progress. Total size: 26.00 Kb (100%)... done!
  (2/3) Converting to JSON, 1 records converted
  DEBUG: c:\cygwin\bin\bash.exe --noprofile --norc --noediting -c "PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin; "/cygdrive/C/Users/ES-PHI1/AppData/Local/R/WIN-LI1/4.2/ctrdata/exec/EUCTR21.SH" /cygdrive/C/Users/ES-PHI1/AppData/Local/Temp/RTMPKF1/CTRDAT4"
  (3/3) Importing JSON records into database...
  DEBUG: C:\Users\ES-Philip\AppData\Local\Temp\Rtmpkf8Xvs\ctrDATA4838515e7a2b
  = Imported or updated 1 records on 1 trial(s)
• Checking results if available from EUCTR for 1 trials:
  (1/4) Downloading and extracting results (. = data, F = file[s] and data, x = none):
  Download status: 1 done; 0 in progress. Total size: 992.96 Kb (100%)... done!
  Error in utils::unzip(zipfile = f, exdir = tempDir) :
  cannot open file 'C:/Users/ES-Philip/AppData/Local/Temp/Rtmpkf8Xvs/ctrDATA4838515e7a2b/Cartier.2019.Repeated Full-Face Aesthetic Combination Treatment With AbobotulinumtoxinA, Hyaluronic Acid Filler, and Skin-Boosting Hyaluronic Acid After Monotherapy With AbobotulinumtoxinA or Hyaluronic Acid Filler.pdf': No such file or directory

I believe it is related to this code in main.R

          tmp <- utils::unzip(
            zipfile = f,
            exdir = tempDir)
          if (is.null(tmp)) return(NULL)

dbGetFieldsIntoDf() not working for fields with mixed array and other types

Some JSON trial data have mixed types of values of the same key in different records, schematic example: [{"a_key": "a text value"},{"a_key": ["text one", "text two"]}]. This leads to errors or no returned data when using dbGetFieldsIntoDf(). This was addressed with PR ropensci/nodbi#34.

Until a new release of nodbi, please

• use devtools::install_github("ropensci/nodbi").

Invalid numeric literal

Dear Ralf Herold,

When using your package to retrieve data from the CTIS registry, I encounter the following error message in step 3 (for some narrow queries the error does not occur). Would there be a workaround for this issue?

Best wishes,

Amos de Jong

ctrLoadQueryIntoDb(

• queryterm = "",
• register = "CTIS",
• con = ctis_trials
• )

• Found search query from CTIS:
• Checking trials in EUCTR...
  (1/5) Downloading trials list . . found 400 trials
  (2/5) Downloading and processing part I and parts II... (estimate: 60 Mb)
  Download status: 400 done; 0 in progress. Total size: 58.97 Mb (100%)... done!
  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
  (3/5) Downloading and processing additional data:
  publicevents, summary, layperson, csr, cm, inspections, publicevaluation
  Error: Invalid numeric literal at line 1, column 38668542

update query history does not work with mongodb 3.2

Continuous integration of my project with mongodb 3.2 triggers the error:

Unrecognized field in update operation: arrayFilters,

see https://travis-ci.org/rfhb/ctrdata/jobs/320570386#L1772.

The suspected issue is jeroen/mongolite#116.