Conflicts of Interest

About a third of authors who write practice guidelines in the United States have ties to the pharmaceutical industry, a survey by the journal Nature has discovered (2005;437:1070-1). About 70% of writing panels were affected.

Nature’s journalists surveyed 215 guidelines deposited with the US National Guideline Clearinghouse in 2004. All 215 guidelines concerned drugs. But only 90 contained details of the authors’ conflicts of interest, and, of these, only 31 guidelines were free of ties to industry.

A total of 685 authors contributed to the 90 guidelines that Nature investigated. The researchers found that:

445 authors (65%) declared no conflict of interest
143 (21%) had an advisory board or consultancy position with a relevant company
153 (22%) had a research grant from a relevant company
103 (15%) had a position on a drug company resource panel of expert doctors
16 (2%) held stock in a relevant company
10 (1%) mentioned a different conflict of interest.

It would be interesting to see the UK equivalent.