Researchers Who Withhold Research Results

http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/ClinicalTrials/30482

By John Fauber, Reporter, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today
Published: January 03, 2012

Drug research, even from clinical trials sponsored by the federal government, routinely is suppressed, harming patients and increasing healthcare costs, according to a series of reports published by BMJ.

"The current situation is a disservice to research participants, patients, health systems, and the whole endeavor of clinical medicine," according to an editorial published with the reports.

A solution, according to Richard Lehman, MD, a consultant psychiatrist at the University of Oxford, and Elizabeth Loder, MD, MPH, a contributing editor at BMJ, would be to subject researchers who withhold data to "disciplinary action by professional organizations."

An unexpected finding in the BMJ analysis was that serious lapses appear to have occurred in clinical trials funded by the National Institutes of Health.

According to the analysis, less than half of NIH-funded clinical trials were published in a medical journal within 30 months of the completion of the trial and after 51 months, one-third of trials remained unpublished.

While industry-related profit motives may not be a factor in such cases, there are other possible explanations, said senior author Harlan Krumholz, MD, of Yale University.

Sometimes researchers may get an unexpected finding that contradicts a position they have staked out, he said.

"It is a conflict of their academic beliefs," he said.

At the same time, medical journals may not want to publish negative findings, he said.

A second BMJ paper assessed clinical trials of drugs that already had received at least one Food and Drug Administration approval. In such cases a law requires the reporting within one year of the completion of the trial.

Despite the law, only 163 of 738 such trials, or 22%, had reported the results within a year, the paper found.

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The BMJ papers are just the latest salvos in an ongoing controversy over both industry support of research and control of raw data from trials.

"It is grossly unethical and an insult to the integrity of medicine when this is allowed to occur and go unpunished," said orthopedic surgeon Chuck Rosen, MD, president of the Association for Medical Ethics.

From diabetes drugs to spine surgery products, scandals involving concealed data have mounted. Consider the cases of a trio of drugs that were the subject of Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today articles:

For two years, Schering-Plough, the maker of the popular cholesterol drug Vytorin, sat on the results of a clinical trial showing the drug provided no benefit in improving artery health. During that time the drug was heavily marketed to consumers in TV ads. The situation came to light in 2008 after a congressional investigation was launched.

In 2003, a clinical trial of Multaq, a drug that treated irregular heart beat, was stopped because more patients who were getting the drug were dying than those who were getting a placebo. However, the study was not published until five years later.

In 2007, an independent analysis of the diabetes drug Avandia found that the drug increased heart attacks and cardiovascular deaths.

Steven Nissen, MD, the lead author of the analysis, said 35 of the 42 studies he looked at were unpublished and were obtained only because a court case required the drug's maker, GlaxoSmithKline, to turn over the data.

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Critics pointed to Medtronic's bone-growth stimulating back surgery product known as Infuse.

Last year, the Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today reported that the results of a crucial clinical trial of the product were not published until nearly five years after the trial had to be halted because unwanted bone was growing around the spines of the trial volunteers. The paper was written by surgeons who have received millions of dollars in royalties from other Medtronic spine products.

What's more, the authors of the belated paper downplayed the bone overgrowth, saying it did not harm patients, a claim that was flatly refuted by a doctor interviewed by the Journal Sentinel/MedPage Today.

The doctor, an Oklahoma orthopedic surgeon, said two of his patients who were in the trial had to undergo additional surgery because the bone overgrowth was painfully impinging on nerve roots. One of the patients, a man who was in his 50s at the time, needed three operations -- one for the implant, a second to remove the unwanted bone formation, and a third when the additional bone grew back yet again.

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