Wyeth 'played up hormone therapy'

Wyeth 'played up hormone therapy': "CHICAGO - DRUGMAKER Wyeth used ghostwriters to play up the benefits and downplay the harm of hormone replacement therapy in articles published in medical journals, US researchers said on Tuesday.

Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman of Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington and colleagues analysed dozens of ghostwritten reviews and commentaries published in medical journals and journal supplements, many of them using documents from judicial trials.

They said Wyeth, now owned by Pfizer, paid a medical communication company called DesignWrite $25,000 to ghostwrite articles on clinical studies, including four testing low-dose Prempro, the company's combination estrogen-progestin therapy.

The team said the articles were intended to mitigate concerns that hormone replacement therapy raises the risk of breast cancer, and to support the unfounded idea that the drugs offer some protection against heart disease.

Fugh-Berman and colleagues said DesignWrite was also assigned to write 20 review articles about the drug at $20,000 each. They said the company was expected to promote unauthorized use of the drug to prevent dementia, Parkinson's disease, vision troubles and even wrinkles.

Pfizer challenged the report, noting in a statement that Fugh-Berman was a paid expert witness for plaintiffs in hormone therapy litigation. 'Even with her critical perspective, she could not establish that there were inaccuracies in any of the peer-reviewed articles, or that their authors relinquished control over their work,' the company said. -- REUTERS

http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.1000335