Researchers Find A Bias Toward Upbeat Findings On Antidepressants

The finding is likely to inflame a continuing debate about how drug trial data is reported. In 2004, after revelations that negative findings from antidepressant trials had not been published, a group of leading medical journals agreed to stop publishing clinical trials that were not registered in a public database. Trade groups representing the world’s largest drug makers announced that members’ companies would begin to release more data from trials more quickly, on their own database, clinicalstudyresults.org.

And last year, Congress passed legislation that expanded the type of trials and the depth of information that must be submitted to clinicaltrials.gov, a public database operated by the National Library of Medicine. The Food and Drug Administration’s Web site provides limited access to recent reviews of drug trials, but critics say it is very hard to navigate.

“This is a very important study for two reasons,” said Dr. Jeffrey M. Drazen, editor-in-cheif of The New England Journal. “One is that when you prescribe drugs, you want to make sure you’re working with best data possible; you wouldn’t buy a stock if you only knew a third of the truth about it.”

Second, he continued, “we need to show respect for the people who enter a trial.”

“They take some risk to be in the trial and then the drug company hides the data?” he asked. “That kind of thing gets us pretty passionate about this issue.”

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