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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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 Posted: Wed Jan 16, 2008 7:32 pm Post subject: Unfavorable antidepressant studies don�t get into print |
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BOSTON -- Nearly a third of antidepressant drug studies are never published in the medical literature and nearly all happen to show that the drug being tested did not work, researchers reported on Wednesday.
In some of the studies that are published, unfavorable results have been recast to make the medicine appear more effective than it really is, said the research team led by Erick Turner of the Oregon Health & Science University.
Even if not deliberate, this can be bad news for patients, they wrote in their report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
"Selective publication can lead doctors to make inappropriate prescribing decisions that may not be in the best interest of their patients and, thus, the public health," they wrote.
The idea that unfavorable test results are quietly tucked away so nobody will see them -- sometimes call the "file drawer effect" -- has been around for years.
The Turner team used a U.S. Food and Drug Administration registry in which companies are supposed to log details of their drug tests before the experiments are begun.
"It tells you where they placed their bets before they saw the data," Mr. Turner said in a telephone interview.
Of the 74 studies that started for the 12 antidepressants, 38 produced positive results for the drug. All but one of those studies were published.
However, only three of the 36 studies with negative or questionable results, as assessed by the FDA, were published and another 11 were written as if the drug had worked.
"Not only were positive results more likely to be published, but studies that were not positive, in our opinion, were often published in a way that conveyed a positive outcome," said the authors.
For example, of the seven negative studies done on GlaxoSmithKline's Paxil, five were never published. The researchers found three studies for GSK's Wellbutrin SR, but the two negative ones never reached print.
There were five studies for Pfizer's Zoloft, but the three showing the drug to be ineffective were not published. A fourth study, ruled questionable by the FDA, was written and published to make it appear that the drug worked.
A Glaxo spokeswoman said the company posts the data from all of its trials, positive or negative, on the Internet.
"GlaxoSmithKline agrees that public disclosure of clinical trial results for marketed medicines is essential and fully supports registration of all trials in progress," she said.
"Pfizer is committed to the communication of results of all registered clinical studies, regardless of outcome. More specifically, we have committed to disclose clinical trial results within one year after study completion for all of our marketed products," Pfizer spokesman Jack Cox said in an e-mail.
Mr. Turner and his colleagues did not find out who was to blame for not publishing the studies. He said medical journals may have played a role by deciding they would rather publish favorable results.
"There's an expectation that if you get a positive result, that's what you're supposed to do, and if you get a negative result you have failed," said Turner. "The first impulse is to say, �I was wrong. Maybe I should move on to something more interesting'" so the results may never get written up. |
http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=242336 |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 6:45 pm Post subject: |
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All the news that's "fit" to print.
Outta sight, outta mind.
Free & natural, medi-tation = the BEST medi-cation 
Happy, happy  |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:25 pm Post subject: |
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| igotthisguitar wrote: |
Free & natural, medi-tation = the BEST medi-cation
Happy, happy |
How many negative studies on the efficacy of CAM get published in CAM journals? Far far less. Try none. Ever. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 8:34 pm Post subject: |
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| What is CAM? |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 2:06 am Post subject: |
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| thepeel wrote: |
| What is CAM? |
Complimentary and Alternative Medicine. Or Supplementary Complimentary and Alternative Medicine (SCAM). Basically, oriental medicine, homeopaths, chiro, naturopaths, energy massage ya ya, you name it. |
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thepeel
Joined: 08 Aug 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 2:13 am Post subject: |
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| I hear crystals can cure a broken leg. The energy from the crystal becomes your energy. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 3:16 am Post subject: |
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All the news that's "fit" to print.
Outta sight, outta mind.
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How many programs a year does Alex Jones air that discredit the story about space lizards living in underground caverns in northern New Mexico? What is he hiding by censoring this news? Hmmm? |
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Czarjorge
Joined: 01 May 2007
Location: I now have the same moustache, and it is glorious.
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 3:30 am Post subject: |
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There are also a lot of studies showing that cognitive, talk, therapy is as good or better than drugs. They don't get nearly the amount of play as pro-drug studies. Why is this surprising?
Why should the medical journals act any different than the doctors themselves?
Why should a company publish a study it did or paid for if it shows their product in a negative light?
The same can be said for almost anything, medical or not. Corporations can't be trusted to act in the public good as they have no motive for doing so, and in most cases their profit motive runs counter to the common good. |
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mindmetoo
Joined: 02 Feb 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 4:21 am Post subject: |
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| Czarjorge wrote: |
There are also a lot of studies showing that cognitive, talk, therapy is as good or better than drugs. They don't get nearly the amount of play as pro-drug studies. Why is this surprising?
Why should the medical journals act any different than the doctors themselves?
Why should a company publish a study it did or paid for if it shows their product in a negative light?
The same can be said for almost anything, medical or not. Corporations can't be trusted to act in the public good as they have no motive for doing so, and in most cases their profit motive runs counter to the common good. |
I'm skeptical any kind of cognitive therapy can work with the severely depressed. It's important to have a combination. The drugs to balance the person out and therapy to help the person deal with stress before it starts the chemical imbalance that leads the person into a depression.
Drugs have helped empty insane asylums. People who would normally be committed can lead good lives.
Yes. Drug companies are for profit enterprises and they do whatever it takes to maximize their bottom line. However, if you got rid of the drug companies then you would have to finance drug research purely with tax dollars. So replace the huge sums of private money going into drug research with your tax dollars. Not sure that's the better alternative. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 4:41 am Post subject: |
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| Personally, I favor chaining the wacky to the wall and charging the 'sane' (loosely defined) a fee to come in and laugh at them. The fee should cover drug research costs. (Sorry, but I'm a helpless anglophile) |
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Czarjorge
Joined: 01 May 2007
Location: I now have the same moustache, and it is glorious.
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 5:24 am Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
I'm skeptical any kind of cognitive therapy can work with the severely depressed. It's important to have a combination. The drugs to balance the person out and therapy to help the person deal with stress before it starts the chemical imbalance that leads the person into a depression.
Drugs have helped empty insane asylums. People who would normally be committed can lead good lives.
Yes. Drug companies are for profit enterprises and they do whatever it takes to maximize their bottom line. However, if you got rid of the drug companies then you would have to finance drug research purely with tax dollars. So replace the huge sums of private money going into drug research with your tax dollars. Not sure that's the better alternative. |
The depressed do seem to do as well with talk therapy as they do with drugs. Talk therapy has also shown promise with things like insomnia and stress disorders.
Drugs must be used with things like schizophrenia and severe mental disorders. You can't talk someone out of visual and auditory hallucinations.
As far as your argument that the drug companies would fold if they didn't make double digit profit each year, SHENANIGANS. I CALL SHENANIGANS. US citizens are charged through the nose for drugs. These companies don't do that in other countries. Why? Because they are regulated. I don't think drug companies should go away, but I do think corporate citizens should have the same expectations placed on them as you or I do. |
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Junior
Joined: 18 Nov 2005
Location: the eye
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 6:33 am Post subject: |
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| Thats nothing. Zero reports that are critical of evolution pass peer review. |
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stevemcgarrett
Joined: 24 Mar 2006
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 7:05 am Post subject: |
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OP:
For the record, psychotherapy is usually recommended in combination with a regimen of anti-depressants. The notion that talking it out will do it alone for many if not most clinically depressed patients is just that--a fanciful notion.
That said, anyone know whether any consensus has been reached in the field of psychiatry or the medical research field at large on whether Prozac can turn some people violent?
I noticed that Tom Cruise has charged psychiatry with "crimes against humanity." Funny, but I was going to levy almost the same charge against the moonbats who run the cult of Scientology. |
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igotthisguitar
Joined: 08 Apr 2003
Location: South Korea (Permanent Vacation)
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 3:03 pm Post subject: |
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| mindmetoo wrote: |
Drugs have helped empty insane asylums.
People who would normally be committed can lead "good" lives. |
Hey, "good" for you MemindJoo! It's always nice to come across these feel "good" success stories.
Keep up the "good" work |
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Kuros
Joined: 27 Apr 2004
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| Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 7:56 pm Post subject: |
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I emailed this to a friend who's doing his PhD in biochemistry
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| This doesn't surprise me in the least. As far as conflict of interest, the answer is yes, however independent testing is simply not feasible from a financial standpoint. The FDA has no where near the resources to conduct clinical trials, and academia is equally ill suited for this task. The current model of drug development leads to this kind of haphazard, unscientific production of new medicine: the drug companies merely scan thousands to hundreds of thousands of compounds to figure out if any of them do anything useful, and once they get a hit they modify it randomly until it has enough bioactivity to market as a drug. Things like mode or mechanism of action, toxicity, side effects, etc. are afterthoughts- they in no way rationaly design these medicines (ever wonder why every pharma add has a ten page list of horrible side effects?) Rational drug design requires a coherent effort coordinated between pharmacologists, synthetic organic chemists, toxicologists, and doctors. Most of all, rational drug design must have as its foundation solid, thorough basic ('pure') science research behind it. This approach is not as profitable nor as fast at delivering new products to market as the curret model, and so innovation in the design of new medicine has slowed to a crawl. That's my two cents on it. |
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