Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Stinging rebuke of the Avandia meta-analysis

In my humble opinion a bad meta-analysis belongs at the bottom of the evidence based medicine hierarchy. The Avandia meta-analysis has been accepted uncritically by the media but how good is it, really? The Angry Pharmacist has some questions. The entire post is compelling reading, but I was most interested in the part about the conflict of interest disclosure, a point the popular media missed entirely: Dr. Nissen reports receiving research support to perform clinical trials through the Cleveland Clinic Cardiovascular Coordinating Center from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Daiichi Sankyo, Roche, Takeda, Sanofi-Aventis, and Eli Lilly.

It’s an impressive list of Glaxo’s competitors, including Takeda, the maker of Avandia’s most direct competitor, Actose. Well, how about that!

Via Kevin M.D.

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