Greedy Trial Lawyer
Follow The Money In Drug Research Before You Believe The Results
Category: Gaming The System
Would anyone be surprised if a published survey funded by Coca Cola concluded that Americans prefer the taste of Coke over Pepsi?
Statins - Findings Depend On Who Has Funded The Research
Research on the effectiveness of a major class of drug - statins, used to reduce cholesterol - has come under the spotlight in a new article published in PLoS Medicine. There are several statins now on the market and many research trials have compared different brands of statin 'head-to-head'. The authors of the article looked at nearly 200 such trials, some were funded by governments, some by pharmaceutical companies, and in some cases the source of the funding had not been made clear. The authors found that trials of head-to-head comparisons were more likely to report results and conclusions favouring the sponsor's own product than the drug with which it was compared.There are many possible reasons why this might be. It has been suggested that drug companies may deliberately choose lower dosages for the comparison drug when they carry out head-to-head trials. Others have suggested that trials which produce unfavourable results are not published, or that unfavourable outcomes are suppressed. Whatever the reasons, the conclusions of this article are important, and suggest that the evidence base relating to statins may be substantially biased. There may also be implications for research involving other types of drug.
Yes, I believe the implications are that the published self-funded research trials are likely to be self-serving. Maybe it's time for triple blind studies in which the sponsor of the study is concealed from researchers. But, that would likely mean the end of funding by drug manufacturers who know the true purpose of the sponsorship is not an impartial scientific conclusion.
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