Tuesday, February 27, 2007

From the Department of the Bleeding Obvious

Industry-funded clinical trials of breast cancer drugs report more favorable results than independent research , a new study reports.

Some 84 percent of company-supported drug studies published in 10 major medical journals in 2003 reported positive results about the breast cancer drugs they investigated.

Non-industry supported studies were far less likely to be upbeat, publishing favorable results just 54 percent of the time, according to an analysis by Dr. Jeffrey Peppercorn, a cancer physician and researcher at UNC Chapel Hill's School of Medicine, and colleagues at Harvard's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

The analysis is the latest to raise questions about the role pharmaceutical companies play in funding and shaping research used to decide whether drugs are safe, effective and worthy of Americans' medicine cabinets. The results published online in the journal of the American Cancer Society.

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