Medical News: Gabapentin Studies for Off-Label Uses Cooked? - in Neurology, Pain Management from MedPage Today

"Because the outcomes we examined were fiddled with to some extent, we don't know what the outcome was for the primary outcome that was originally set," she said.

"If I were a physician, or a patient, I would be thinking, what is the true evidence base here?"

She added that the altered outcomes and unpublished studies had the potential to skew results of systematic reviews, such as those produced by the Cochrane Collaboration.
A 2005 Cochrane review, based in part on the studies Dickersin and colleagues examined, had found that gabapentin was effective for acute and chronic pain.
"[It] should now be updated with the inclusion of unpublished information made available through litigation," she and her colleagues wrote.
They also recommended that registration of clinical trials on sites such as Clinicaltrials.gov should be mandatory, and the listings should include full study protocols and amendments.
"The word transparency is now one that's on everybody's lips, whether we're talking about healthcare reform or research evidence," Dickersin said."