INDUSTRY SUPPORT OF BREAST CANCER TRIALS ASSOCIATED WITH POSITIVE RESULTS, STUDY SAYS

Industry involvement in breast cancer trials may affect study design, focus and results, according to an article published in the online version of the journal Cancer.

In 2003, the most recent year evaluated in the article, studies with pharmaceutical industry involvement were "significantly more likely to report positive results," the article said, with 84 percent showing positive outcomes compared with 54 percent of trials without industry involvement.

These studies were also more likely to be single-arm studies (66 percent versus 33 percent) and to evaluate metastatic disease (72 percent versus 46 percent), according to the authors, who analyzed 140 studies.

The authors looked at 45 studies published in 1993, 39 published in 1998 and 56 published in 2003. Industry involvement was defined as funding, provision of drugs and/or authorship for a study. Any indication of pharmaceutical industry involvement meant that a trial was categorized as a "pharmaceutical study." The majority of the 2003 trials evaluated by the authors were pharmaceutical studies.

This finding highlights the need to understand the influence industry may have on breast cancer research, the authors wrote, as other research areas may also be affected by this involvement. Previous analyses of nononcologic research show that pharmaceutical sponsorship is increasing and that sponsored studies are more likely to report positive results than studies without clear industry connections, the article said.