drug research bias

[Ian Murray <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

[who woulda thunk it?]

Research funded by drug companies is "biased"
00:01 30 May 03
NewScientist.com news service

Research funded by drug companies is more likely to produce results that
favour the sponsor's product, reveals a new study.

Researchers analysed 30 previous reports examining pharmaceutical
industry-backed research and found the conclusions of such research were
four times more likely to be positive than research backed by other
sponsors.

"What we found was that in almost all cases there was a bias - a rather
heavy bias - in favour [of a drug] when the study was industry funded,"
study leader Joel Lexchin told New Scientist.

The main reasons for this, say the team, may be that positive studies are
more likely to be published than negative ones. Also, inappropriate
comparison drugs may be used in these trials, skewing findings in favour
of the tested product.

The new analysis is published in a special issue of the British Medical
Journal, which focuses on the close relationship between doctors and the
pharmaceutical industry.


Two to entangle


"Doctors, drug companies and most importantly patients would all benefit
from greater distance," cautions BMJ editor Richard Smith. "It does of
course take two to entangle, and we hope that nobody will see this theme
issue as anti-drug company."

But Richard Ley, a spokesman for the Association of the British
Pharmaceutical Industry, rejects the study's findings. "The average drug
takes 10 to 12 years to develop and costs £350 million - even if you are
the most selfish company in the world you can't afford to risk the time
and money [to produce biased results]," he told New Scientist.

The clinical trials are overseen from start to finish by independent
ethics committees, says Ley, with final checks made by a country's
licensing authorities.


Quality scale


Lexchin, an expert in pharmaceutical policy, at York University in
Toronto, Canada, and colleagues analysed 30 studies examining
drug-industry backed trials between 1966 to 2002.

Industry sponsored studies were less likely to be published than research
funded by other sources. However, drug company backed studies were four
times more likely to show favourable results than studies funded by other
sponsors.

But of the 13 studies that looked at the scientific methods used, none
reported that the industry-backed trials were of lower quality. Lexchin
says this is because standard scales used to examine scientific quality do
not cover all issues, such as what drug was used in a trial as a
comparison.

Industry-backed studies often compare a new drug to placebo or a second
line agent, he says, which makes it easier to get a positive result for a
new drug. "My preference would be to compare with what's recommended as
the current best therapy," he says.

Lexchin notes that in Canada and the US, the pharmaceutical industry is
the largest funder of medical research. "It does have implications in
terms of whether or not we can believe the results of research they are
funding" he says. "I certainly hope we can, but our study raises
questions."


Shaoni Bhattacharya