Asthma
ADVERSE EFFECTS OF INHALED CORTICOSTEROIDS IN FUNDED AND NONFUNDED STUDIES – (03-17-08)
Adverse Effects of Inhaled Corticosteroids in Funded and Nonfunded Studies
In this study, authors looked at the results and how they were portrayed when the studies on asthma medications were funded by a pharmaceutical company. The funded studies were less likely to find that a side effect was statistically significant, and even more importantly, the authors of the funded studies, when adverse effects were significant, were 3.68 times as likely to describe the drug as “safe” in the conclusions.
The problem is that a busy clinician reading just the abstract without a good idea of what odds ratios or relative risks are may be misled into think the drug is “safe.” Of course, we are assuming that most clinicians actually READ medical literature… The bottom line is that, over the past few years, we have seen that the data supporting medication is flawed in every step of the process, from design to data crunching right down to the wording to describe the data.
