12 Jan 2007

Drug makers opening up?

Since medical journals started to pressure pharmaceutical companies to enter studies in a US government registry, drug makers have done a better job of providing important information about their research, says an editorial published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The editorial said that 8 percent of the 2 983 studies added to the federal registry in 2006 did not describe key outcomes, such as deaths or cholesterol levels, being measured in the trials. In previous years, the rate was 26 percent, the Associated Press reported.

The US federal registry was launched in 2000 but there was only limited drug industry participation until late 2004, when the members of the International Committee on Medical Journal Editors said they'd only publish studies that were signed into the registry in the early stages, the AP reported.

The committee made the move, in part, to prevent drug makers from trying to hide the findings of trials that produced unfavourable results. – (HealthDayNews)