UK experts: Drug studies being suppressed by researchers, could hurt patients

[Judi Lynn]

UK experts: Drug studies being suppressed by researchers, could hurt patients
By Associated Press, Wednesday, January 4, 10:36 AM

LONDON — A British medical journal says a worrying number of drug studies are being suppressed by researchers and that the lack of public data could threaten patient safety.

One study described by the BMJ journal found the results of fewer than half of drug trials paid for by the U.S. National Institutes for Health were published in a scientific journal within 30 months of being finished.

The U.S. agency spends about $3.5 billion sponsoring more than 100,000 clinical trials worldwide.

Previous studies have found one quarter to one half of clinical trials are unpublished for various reasons, including companies sitting on information that could hurt sales, journals uninterested in publishing negative results and academics fearful of releasing results that contradict their original hypothesis.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/uk-experts-drug-studies-being-suppressed-by-researchers-could-hurt-patients/2012/01/04/gIQAdquZaP_story.html

[Uncle Joe]

1. 30 months is entirely too long.

Thanks for the thread, Judi Lynn.

[HuckleB]

2. Kick. This is a big problem, and it needs to be addressed ASAP.

[hedgehog]

3. Sometimes what's a negative or even bad report from one

drug trial , or even some odd observations, can be a major Aha! moment for someone else.

[surrealAmerican]

4. It sounds to me like the NIH needs a way ...

... to make trial results public without waiting for a journal publisher or drug company.

If only they had some sort of internet presence.

[bemildred]

5. Ya think?

You cannot serve both god and Mammon.

[AllyCat]

6. 30 months?? The study should be published before it ever goes to a patient.

[woo me with science]

7. Profit, profit, profit, profit, profit over lives. nt

[LeftishBrit]

8. I'm glad at least that the problem has been raised. Now maybe something will be done about it.

Quite generally speaking in research, negative results are less likely to get published than positive results. There is a pervasive attitude that negative results are at best boring, at worst proof that a study is a failure. Add to that situations where there may be pressure on researchers by drug companies, and you end up with a lot of bias in publication.