Financial disclosures in top rheumatology journals often inaccurate
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts
Key takeaways:
- The disclosure of potential conflicts of interest for many clinical studies is often incomplete or inaccurate.
- Every paper in the study that reported trial results was lacking information.
Financial disclosure statements for studies published in top rheumatology journals are often incomplete or inaccurate, according to data published in Arthritis Care & Research.
“The prevalence of RCTs investigating new antirheumatic drugs has increased significantly over the past 20 years,” Mary L. Guan, MD, of the New York University Grossman School of Medicine, and colleagues wrote. “Accordingly, payments to rheumatologists from drug companies have increased over time, from $29 million in 2014 to $46 million in 2019. Given the financial and research relationships between rheumatologists and the pharmaceutical industry, it is increasingly important that authors be transparent about [potential conflicts of interest (PCOIs)].
“Nonetheless, studies examining disclosure among rheumatology publications are rare,” they added. “Whereas a single study reported that 35% of total payments from industry sources were incompletely disclosed among authors of rheumatology [clinical practice guidelines (CPGs)], no group has looked at disclosure accuracy for clinically-oriented publications in rheumatology journals, an area of importance to rheumatologists and patients alike.”
To investigate discrepancies between published disclosures and those found in the annually updated Open Payments Database (ODP) — which includes payments for consulting services, honoraria, travel- and food-related expenses, research payments and stocks/royalties — Guan and colleagues reviewed disclosures provided by the first, second and final authors of papers published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, Arthritis Care & Research and Seminars in Arthritis and Rheumatism. Entries categorized as basic science studies, letters or clinical practice guidelines were excluded.
For each represented author in the scrutinized papers, the researchers located and verified data present in the ODP. They collected information pertaining to consulting, speaking and honoraria fees paid up to 36 months prior to the publication date of any papers. Guan and colleagues defined a potential conflict of interest as a payment received from a company with an ongoing phase 2 or 3 trial in the same field as the manuscript. Payments excluded from the conflict-of-interest designation were educational support and grants, as well as food and travel expenses.
The analysis included a total of 150 papers. Among these, 101 papers included at least one author with a potential conflict of interest. Out of those, 92 papers included inaccurate disclosures. More specifically, these papers included 135 authors with potential conflicts, of whom 118 (87%) reported disclosures inaccurately. Additionally, all 14 papers that reported trial results had some kind of inaccuracy.
“Inaccurate reporting of financial disclosures is prevalent among authors of clinically oriented papers in top U.S.-based rheumatology journals,” Guan and colleagues wrote. “This creates challenges for readers, who should expect transparent reporting, and for journals that depend on accurate authorial disclosures.”
Collapse
Read more about
Click Here to Manage Email Alerts