Can the Source of Funding for Medical Research Affect the Results?

Can the Source of Funding for Medical Research Affect the Results?:

Many clinical research studies are funded by pharmaceutical companies and there is a general perception that such industry-based funding could potentially skew the results in favor of a new medication or device. The rationale underlying this perception regarding the influence of industry funding is fairly straightforward. Pharmaceutical companies or device manufacturers need to increase the sales of newly developed drugs or devices in order to generate adequate profits. It would be in their best interest to support research that favors their corporate goals. Even though this rationale makes intuitive sense, it does not necessarily prove that industry-funding does influence the results of trials. However, there is also data to support the fact that the funding source does seem to correlate with the outcomes of clinical trials.
One such study was conducted by Paul Ridker and Jose Torres and published in 2006 in JAMA ( Journal of the American Medical Association ). Ridker and Torres analyzed randomized cardiovascular trials published in leading, peer-reviewed medical journals ( JAMA, The Lancet, and the New England Journal of Medicine ) during the five year period of 2000-2005 in which one treatment strategy was directly compared to a competing treatment. They found that 67.2% of studies funded exclusively by for-profit organizations favored the newer treatment, whereas only 49.0% of studies funded by non-profit organizations (such as non-profit foundations and state or federal government agencies) showed results in favor of the newer treatment. This contrast was even more pronounced for pharmaceutical drugs, where 65.5% of the industry sponsored studies showed benefits of the newer treatment, while only 39.5% of non-profit funded studies favored the new treatment.
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