ClinicalTrials.gov API v2: How to Pull Ibogaine Study Records (Worked Example, NCT07226570)

Most people reading about ibogaine research are reading someone's summary of a summary. The registry itself is public, machine-readable, and free — and once you can query it directly, you stop depending on anyone's interpretation, including ours.

This article is a technical walkthrough of the ClinicalTrials.gov API v2 /studies endpoint, using record NCT07226570 as the worked example. It is deliberately a companion piece rather than a summary: if you want the plain-language state of play, read our breakdown of which ClinicalTrials.gov ibogaine studies are recruiting in the United States, which walks through the full registry picture in narrative form. What follows is how to reproduce that picture yourself.

All queries and values below were run and verified on August 8, 2026. Registry records change; re-run them rather than trusting the numbers here indefinitely.

The base endpoint

The v2 API lives at:

https://clinicaltrials.gov/api/v2/studies

No API key, no registration, no rate-limit paperwork for ordinary use. A minimal ibogaine query looks like this:

https://clinicaltrials.gov/api/v2/studies?query.intr=ibogaine&format=json

query.intr searches the intervention field. This matters: searching query.term=ibogaine returns a broader, noisier set that includes studies merely mentioning ibogaine in their descriptions. For "what studies actually involve this compound," query.intr is the tighter filter.

As of August 8, 2026, that query returns nine studies — the complete registered global footprint of ibogaine research.

Trap #1: totalCount is silently omitted

If you parse that response looking for a result count, you will find totalCount missing and probably conclude the API is broken or the field is named something else. It is neither. The count is opt-in:

https://clinicaltrials.gov/api/v2/studies?query.intr=ibogaine&countTotal=true&pageSize=1

With countTotal=true, the response includes "totalCount": 9. Without it, the key simply is not there. This is the single most common stumbling block for people writing their first v2 query, because the failure is silent — you get valid JSON with no error, just no count.

Trap #2: invalid parameters return HTML, not JSON

Ask for a specific record with the parameter you would intuitively guess — query.id=NCT04313712 — and the server returns an nginx HTML error page, not a JSON error object. Any script that pipes the response straight into a JSON parser will crash with a cryptic "Expecting value: line 1 column 1" rather than a useful message.

The correct parameter for fetching records by ID is filter.ids:

https://clinicaltrials.gov/api/v2/studies?filter.ids=NCT07226570&format=json

There is also a single-study path form, /api/v2/studies/NCT07226570, which works but which we found returned intermittent errors under repeated calls. For scripted work, filter.ids on the collection endpoint proved more reliable.

Practical defense: always check the HTTP content type or the first character of the body before parsing.

Trimming the payload with fields

Full study records are large. The fields parameter cuts them down to what you actually need:

https://clinicaltrials.gov/api/v2/studies
  ?query.intr=ibogaine
  &fields=NCTId,BriefTitle,OverallStatus,StudyType,LeadSponsorName,LocationCountry,EnrollmentCount
  &countTotal=true
  &format=json

Those seven fields are, in our experience, the minimum viable set for answering the question most people are actually asking: who is running what, where, at what scale, and is it still open?

Note the response nesting. Values do not sit at the top level — they live under protocolSection, then a module. NCTId is at protocolSection.identificationModule.nctId; status is at protocolSection.statusModule.overallStatus; study type and enrollment are under protocolSection.designModule. Requesting a field does not flatten it.

The worked example: NCT07226570

Here is the full record, verified August 8, 2026:

Field	Value
NCT ID	NCT07226570
Official title	Central Neural Actions of Ibogaine in Opioid Use Disorder (OUD)
Overall status	RECRUITING
Study type	OBSERVATIONAL
Observational model	COHORT
Time perspective	PROSPECTIVE
Enrollment	20
Condition	Opioid Use Disorder (OUD)
Intervention	OTHER — Observational study with MRI/EEG
Lead sponsor	University of California, Irvine
Location	Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute, UC Irvine, California, United States
Start date	2025-09-08
Primary completion	2027-05

This record is worth knowing because it is, as of this writing, the only ibogaine study in the entire registry with status RECRUITING. Everything else is completed, withdrawn, active-but-closed to enrollment, or of unknown status.

Trap #3: the field that makes observational studies look interventional

This is the one that produces genuinely false reporting, and it is worth walking through slowly.

studyType has two values that matter: INTERVENTIONAL (the researchers give participants something and measure what happens) and OBSERVATIONAL (the researchers watch and measure; they do not administer anything).

The trap is that observational records still carry an interventions array. Query NCT04313712 — the Stanford record — and you get:

studyType:    OBSERVATIONAL
status:       ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING
intervention: DRUG — "ibogaine with magnesium treatment"

Read that intervention line in isolation and you would conclude Stanford administered ibogaine and magnesium to veterans. Stanford did not. In an observational study, that field describes an exposure being observed — in this case, treatment participants obtained independently, elsewhere, which researchers then measured before and after.

The distinction is not pedantic. It is the difference between "a major American university ran an ibogaine trial" and "a major American university studied people who went abroad for treatment on their own." Both are meaningful; only one is true. Always read studyType before you read interventions.

Contrast the UC Irvine record above, where the intervention is honestly typed OTHER — Observational study with MRI/EEG. Same study type, far less misleading field.

Trap #4: status vocabulary is not intuitive

The overallStatus values carry specific meanings, and two of them get misread constantly:

• RECRUITING — open, enrolling now.
• ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING — the study is running and participants are being followed, but enrollment is closed. This is a normal, healthy mid-study state. It is not a failure signal.
• COMPLETED — finished as planned.
• WITHDRAWN — closed before enrolling a single participant. Enrollment will read 0.
• TERMINATED — stopped early after enrolling.
• SUSPENDED — paused, may resume.
• UNKNOWN — the sponsor has not updated the record within the expected window. It means stale paperwork, not necessarily a stalled study.

Only Terminated, Suspended, and Withdrawn are genuine trouble states. Active-not-recruiting is routinely and wrongly reported as a study that "stalled."

A related artifact: completion dates that sit in the past on a study still marked active. Stanford's record shows a completion date that has already passed while status remains ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING. That is ordinary sponsor update lag, not evidence of a problem.

What the full nine-record pull shows

Running the query and sorting by study type produces a pattern that no individual record reveals:

Interventional studies (participants actually received ibogaine) — four records, and every single one is outside the United States:

• University of São Paulo, Brazil — alcoholism, n=9, COMPLETED
• ICEERS, Spain — methadone detoxification, n=20, COMPLETED
• atai Therapeutics, United Kingdom — opioid withdrawal, n=116, COMPLETED
• Johns Hopkins University, United States — WITHDRAWN, n=0

The sole American interventional entry never enrolled anyone.

Observational studies — five records, including UC Irvine (recruiting), Stanford (active, closed to enrollment), a 52-participant study from Axial Therapeutic Research, and two personality-and-drug-use registries.

So the honest one-line summary the API supports is this: every ibogaine study conducted in the United States is observational. Every interventional ibogaine trial happened somewhere else, and all of them are already finished.

That is a defensible, reproducible claim. It is also considerably more informative than "ibogaine is being studied," which is what most coverage offers.

Why we publish the query instead of just the conclusion

Ibogaine attracts overstatement in both directions — breathless claims of cure rates on one side, blanket dismissal on the other. The registry is one of the few sources that is neither. It is a bureaucratic record of what was registered, by whom, at what size, with what result status.

Note also what the registry does not capture: the substantial body of published outcome data from clinical practice outside trial settings, and observational work like the Stanford analysis that produced findings on veterans with repeated blast exposure. A completed-trials count of four is a statement about the regulatory pipeline, not about the total evidence base. We cover that broader evidence in our ibogaine research hub, and the mechanism behind these findings in our explainer on how ibogaine works at the receptor level.

If you are trying to understand where formal ibogaine research stands in the U.S. specifically — which studies are open, which are closed, and what that means for someone considering treatment — the narrative companion to this piece is our guide to ClinicalTrials.gov ibogaine studies recruiting in the United States. And for the study that has drawn the most attention among veterans, see our coverage of Stanford's ibogaine findings on PTSD symptom reduction.

A reusable snippet

For anyone who wants to re-run this monthly:

curl -s "https://clinicaltrials.gov/api/v2/studies\
?query.intr=ibogaine\
&countTotal=true\
&pageSize=50\
&fields=NCTId,BriefTitle,OverallStatus,StudyType,LeadSponsorName,EnrollmentCount\
&format=json"

Pipe it through jq or any JSON parser, read studyType before interventions, and treat ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING as normal. Those three habits will keep you ahead of most published commentary on ibogaine research.

If a new record appears with studyType: INTERVENTIONAL, LocationCountry: United States, and OverallStatus: RECRUITING, that will be genuine news. As of August 8, 2026, no such record exists.

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Medical disclaimer: This article is educational and describes a public research database. It is not medical advice, and nothing here should be read as a claim of safety or efficacy for any treatment. Ibogaine carries documented cardiac risk and requires screening and medical supervision. Registry listings do not constitute endorsement or evidence of approval. Consult a qualified physician before making any treatment decision. Ibogaine is a Schedule I substance in the United States and is not available for clinical treatment there.

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To discuss whether physician-supervised ibogaine treatment is appropriate for your situation, or to review our protocols for opioid dependence, our medical team is available for consultation.