Study: Studies funded by Drug Makers Underestimate Problems

Today's New York Times drew my attention to this study:

Adverse Effects of Inhaled Corticosteroids in Funded and Nonfunded Studies

It looked at studies of inhaled drugs and found two phenomena that should surprise no one who follows the news about any new drug.

1. Studies paid for by the company making the drug found far fewer side effects than studies of the same drug paid for by organizations that had no financial stake in the drug. The drug maker's studies were much more likely to describe a drug as "safe" or "effective" than were other studies.

2. The reason for this lay in the way that the studies were designed which appeared to make it easier to hide the side effects.

What's crucial here is that the misleading studies funded by the drug makers included the clinical trials used to get approval for the drug.

This should remind you that all the studies done to get approval for a drug are paid for by the company who will profit (greatly!) from the drug's sale. But this system ensures that the studies will be cooked as far as possible.

What does this mean for you? Simply this: for chronic conditions it makes sense to avoid new drugs no matter how well hyped until they've been in the marketplace for enough time that their real side effects will become apparent.

And don't trust those company funded studies that "prove" that the drugs cause much-yearned for benefits like weight loss or beta cell regeneration. Almost always these benefits disappear when the drug is studied by someone who isn't going to profit from its sale.