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Senior Citizen Alerts
Don’t Swallow All the Research Reports on Beverages
Cautions New Study
Studies funded by industry tend to produce results
favorable to funding source
 January 10, 2007 – Because senior citizens tend to
be more skeptical than most, not many readers of SeniorJournal.com will
be surprised by a new study that found beverage studies funded solely by
industry were four to eight times more likely to have conclusions
favorable to sponsors’ financial interest than were studies with no
industry funding.
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Senior
Journal Note |
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At SeniorJournal.com we
try to always identify the source for the information used in
our news reports. If it is not clearly stated in the article, it
is included in notes below the story. – Tucker Sutherland,
editor |
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Other recent analyses have documented bias in
pharmaceutical studies funded by industry, according to the report from
Children’s Hospital Boston. Their study finds a similar phenomenon in
scientific articles about nutrition, particularly in studies of
beverages.
This analysis, the hospital says, is the first
systematic one performed on nutrition studies and it is published online
in the January 9 issue of the journal PLoS Medicine.
Bias in nutrition studies may have far greater
effects than bias in pharmaceutical studies, says David Ludwig, MD, PhD,
the study’s senior author and director of the Optimal Weight for Life
(OWL) program at Children’s Hospital Boston.
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Not only do the findings of nutrition studies
receive frequent media attention, but they influence governmental and
professional dietary guidelines, the design of intervention programs,
and FDA regulation of health claims on foods and beverages, he says.
“We don’t all take drugs, but we eat every day,”
Ludwig says. “If the science base is compromised by conflict of
interest, that’s a top-order threat to public health.”
Because the researchers focused their analysis on
soft drinks, juice and milk, they aren’t sure whether their findings
extend to nutrition studies as a whole.
“We chose beverages because they represent an area
of nutrition that’s very controversial, that’s relevant to children, and
involves a part of the food industry that is highly profitable and where
research findings could have direct financial implications,” Ludwig
says.
The researchers began by conducting a Medline
search of all existing scientific literature about soft drinks, juice
and milk published during a five-year period (1999-2003). They retrieved
538 articles, of which 206 were eligible for analysis.
Eligible articles had to look at health outcomes or
disease markers, had to involve humans or human tissue, had to be
classifiable as an interventional or observational study or a scientific
review, and had to explicitly state the beverages’ effects on health
measures. Of the 206 eligible articles, 111 declared financial
sponsorship.
To guard against bias, the studies were analyzed
independently. One investigator selected the articles for inclusion
according to pre-established criteria. Another two investigators, who
had no knowledge of the financial sponsors, and who were not told the
article’s author, title or journal of publication, classified the
articles’ conclusions as “favorable,” “neutral” or “unfavorable.”
A fourth investigator, who had no knowledge of the
conclusions, determined the funding source (22 percent were funded
entirely by industry, 47 percent had no industry funding, and 32 percent
had mixed funding) and classified articles as to whether a favorable
finding would be beneficial, negative or neutral to its funder’s
financial interests.
When analyzed statistically, article conclusions
were significantly related to funding source. Interventional studies
with all-industry funding were much less likely to have unfavorable
conclusions than those with no industry funding (0 vs. 37 percent).
Among all types of studies, comparing all-industry
versus no-industry funding, the odds ratio for having a favorable versus
unfavorable conclusion was 4.37, increasing to 7.61 when beverage type,
publication year and examination of authors’ personal conflicts of
interest were taken into account.
The researchers note that during their five-year
study, the overall proportion of papers declaring their funding sources
increased, as journals tightened their disclosure requirements. However,
taking publication year into consideration didn’t weaken the study’s
findings. “This isn’t an effect that’s disappearing,” Ludwig says.
The bias may take several forms, Ludwig adds.
Although false data could be present in some studies, more likely the
biases reflect subtle manipulations, such as framing the questions in a
way that make the results more favorable to a sponsor.
In other cases, papers with unfavorable results may
simply go unpublished.
Editor’s Notes:
The study’s first author was Lenard Lesser, MD, a
Children’s research assistant now in the Tufts University Family
Medicine Residency. Co-authors were Cara Ebbeling, PhD, of Children’s
Hospital Boston, Merill Goozner of the Center for Science in the Public
Interest (Washington, DC), and David Wypij, PhD, a biostatistician at
the Harvard School of Public Health.
The study was funded by the Charles H. Hood
Foundation (Boston, Mass.) and the Department of Medicine at Children’s
Hospital Boston.
Founded in 1869 as a 20-bed hospital for children,
Children’s Hospital Boston today is the nation’s leading pediatric
medical center, the largest provider of health care to Massachusetts
children, and the primary pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical
School. In addition to 347 pediatric and adolescent inpatient beds and
comprehensive outpatient programs, Children’s houses the world’s largest
research enterprise based at a pediatric medical center, where its
discoveries benefit both children and adults. More than 500 scientists,
including eight members of the National Academy of Sciences, 11 members
of the Institute of Medicine and 10 members of the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute comprise Children’s research community. For more information
about the hospital visit:
http://www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom.
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