Many cardiology studies lack funding

From 2007 to 2009, a considerable proportion of published cardiology research was conducted with little direct financial support, researchers reported in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Although more than 70% of researchers received some funding, in most cases, it was only partial funding and nearly one-third of published studies were unfunded, Tuan V. Mai, MD, of Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego, and colleagues said.

Mai and colleagues sent an electronic survey to 938 corresponding researchers published in the Journal of theAmerican Collegeof Cardiologyfrom 2007 to 2009. With a response rate of 41%, results shows that 26% of researchers were fully funded, 30% received no direct funding and 44.1% were partially funded. Government and industry accounted for most funding (41.8% and 35.1%, respectively). Institutional, foundation, association, philanthropy and other grants comprised the remaining 23.1%.

Researchers found that age and institution played an important role in funding. Those aged 40 years or younger were less likely to receive partial funding and more likely to be unfunded than older researchers (24.3% vs. ≥47%; P=.001). No researchers from community hospitals were fully funded and a greater percentage had no funding compared with those in other settings.

Results showed that full funding was less common among researchers from Europe (16.7%) and those conducting interventional (7.3%) or heart rhythm (11.5%) studies (P<.05 for all). Clinical investigators were more likely to be unfunded vs. basic/basic and clinical investigators (35.7% vs. 19.1%; P=.001), but researchers noted this was only a trend.

By contrast, researchers from Veteran Affairs or government hospitals were more likely to be fully funded than those from non-government hospitals (45.9% vs. ≤27.1%; P=.001). Those from the United States were also more likely to be fully funded when compared with non-American researchers (35.3% vs. ≤ 28.6%; P=.006).

Those with more sources of funding and type of support were generally aged at least 50 years, from the United States, had PhD degrees, were conducting basic and clinical research or were studying genetics/genomics (P<.05 for all), according to the study.

“Some of the most important medical discoveries for cardiovascular patients have been developed without specific grant funding. … That this trend continues is evidenced by the findings of our survey,” the researchers wrote. “Nearly 1 out of 3 manuscripts published by JACC does not have financial support and these are more often clinical studies done by young investigators. These data are almost certainly a reflection of the difficulty in obtaining grant support from the NIH, industry and other sources.”

For more information:

Mai TV. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2012;doi:10.1016/j.jacc.2012.10.013.

Disclosure: Study researcher Glenn Collins reports being an employee of the American College of Cardiology. Study researcher Anthony N. DeMaria. MD, is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American College Cardiology. All others report no relevant financial disclosures.