Studies of cancer treatments were more likely to report improvements in overall survival when the investigators reported some kind of financial conflict of interest, researchers said.
Analysis of 124 oncology clinical trials showed that those with a conflict of interest — either direct industry funding or an author’s declarations of financial relationships — were more than twice as likely to find significantly improved patient survival, according to Reshma Jagsi, M.D., D.Phil., of the University of Michigan, and colleagues.
The finding emerged from an online report in Cancer covering conflicts of interest in more than 1,500 oncology studies in major journals during 2006.
Among 52 randomized, controlled trials with no conflict of interest, 14% found significantly better survival with the intervention relative to control, 72% found equivalent survival, and 6% significantly favored the control.
In 72 similar trials with a conflict of interest, 29% found in favor of the intervention, 61% showed no difference, and none reported better survival with the control (P=0.04 for trend relative to nonconflicted studies)….