A report published in the Journal of the American Medical Association has found that meta-analyses, which consolidate findings from multiple smaller trials to guide clinical guidelines, routinely omit disclosures of financial ties between their authors and the pharmaceutical industry.
Researchers examined 29 meta-analyses spanning 509 individual trials, published in major outlets including the Lancet and the British Medical Journal. Only two of the 29 reported funding sources for the underlying trials, and none disclosed any author-industry financial relationships.
The underlying randomized trials told a different story: 62.5 percent reported their funding, and of those, nearly 69 percent had received pharmaceutical industry money in full or in part. In seven of the 29 meta-analyses, every included trial carried some form of drug-maker financing or investigator ties, yet only one acknowledged it.
Lead author Brett Thombs of McGill University cautioned that when all supporting studies are financially linked to drug manufacturers, both patients and their physicians risk being misled about treatment effectiveness.
The research team called for policy changes requiring mandatory conflict-of-interest disclosures in meta-analyses, warning that without such rules the information would be lost entirely.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in March 2011, in its own words.