Conflicts of Interest and Outcomes of Cardiovascular Trials.
Abstract
Conflicts of interests have long been recognized as potential sources of influence
in the conduct and reporting of clinical trials. This controversy was again rekindled
after the publication of the latest statin guidelines and a series of studies regarding
competing interests in leading medical journals. We investigate the association between
declared author conflicts and the outcomes of large cardiovascular trials. We searched
the Medline (PubMed) database to identify "phase 2" and "phase 3" clinical trials
using the search term "cardiovascular" over the past decade using "10 years" as the
filter. We perceived the competing interest as present regardless of the nature such
as consulting fees, honoraria, travel imbursements, stock holding, and employment.
Of the 699 titles retrieved, 114 studies met the inclusion criteria. Nearly 80% of
studies had at least a single author with competing interests. The 114 studies had
a total of 1,433 investigators, of which 725 had declared conflicts of interests (50.6%).
A total of 66 studies (58%) had half or >50 percent of investigators who had some
conflicts of interests. Of these studies, 54 studies had favorable outcomes and only
12 had unfavorable outcomes (p <0.001). Among the type of competing interests, consulting
or personal fees was the most common present in 58 investigators (51%). This was followed
by research grants present in 55 the researchers (48%). Among 25 (22%) studies, at
least one investigator reported stakes in the industry, of which only 2 studies had
unfavorable outcomes for the intervention being investigated. Just 1 of the 25 clinical
trials with a sample size of >1,000 had no investigators with competing interests.
In conclusion, authors conflicts are associated with favorable outcomes in cardiovascular
outcome trials.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Biomedical ResearchCardiovascular Diseases
Clinical Trials as Topic
Conflict of Interest
Humans
Periodicals as Topic
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/11670Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1016/j.amjcard.2015.12.011Publication Info
Riaz, Haris; Khan, Muhammad Shahzeb; Riaz, Irbaz Bin; Raza, Sajjad; Khan, Abdur Rahman;
& Krasuski, Richard A (2016). Conflicts of Interest and Outcomes of Cardiovascular Trials. Am J Cardiol, 117(5). pp. 858-860. 10.1016/j.amjcard.2015.12.011. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/11670.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Richard Andrew Krasuski
Professor of Medicine

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