Study: Researchers with Glaxo ties favored Avandia
Most who wrote positive articles after the drug was linked to heart disease had a financial connection to the firm.
Most scientists who published articles supporting GlaxoSmithKline P.L.C.'s diabetes drug Avandia after it was linked to heart disease in 2007 had financial ties to the company, according to a Mayo Clinic report.
The Mayo researchers examined more than 200 articles that appeared after an analysis in the New England Journal of Medicine linked Avandia to a 43 percent increased risk of heart attacks, and a subsequent clinical trial found no greater danger of heart disease.
Glaxo has major operations in the Philadelphia area.
Almost 90 percent of scientists who wrote positive articles, reviews, or commentaries about Avandia had financial ties to London-based Glaxo, the study published in the British Medical Journal found.
Almost three of every four authors who expressed negative views of the drug had no financial ties to manufacturers of diabetes medicines, while just 6 percent of those with positive opinions of the drug received no funding or fees from industry.
The relationships between scientists and pharmaceutical companies may help explain why the interpretations of the published articles varied so widely, the researchers said.
"We aimed to determine whether financial conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical manufacturers could be fueling this fire," wrote the researchers, led by Amy Wang, a resident in internal medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "From our findings, it appears that the answer is yes."
About half of the articles carried conflict-of-interest statements, even though medical journals have beefed up their requirements for disclosing financial links in the past decade, the researchers said.
"These findings, while not necessarily causal, underscore the need for further progress in reporting in order for the scientific record to be trusted," they said.
A Glaxo spokeswoman said the company posted information and results from all its clinical trials on its Web site.
"It's vital that people have trust in the way we do research and the way it's made public," Jo Revill, Glaxo spokeswoman, said yesterday. "Part of that is sharing data. What we have done is develop policies that will have disclosure and encourage disclosure."
Glaxo will disclose all the research payments it makes to investigators and their institutions in the United States starting this year, Revill said.