Gordon Guyatt, MD: Update on the problem of clinical trials being stopped early to inflate efficacy of drugs
Gordon Guyatt, MD, epidemiologist, internist, and biostatistician at McMaster University updates us on the progress being made against the problem of clinical trials being stopped early to inflate efficacy of drugs. Since our first coverage of the topic two years ago, the FDA, the Cochrane group, and other agencies have implemented changes in policy. Dr. Guyatt discusses the Crestor JUPITER trial as an example of a trial that was stopped early and inflated efficacy.
AHRQ, Biostatistics, Cardiology/medicine, FDA, McMaster Med Ctr, NIH, Policy, The Lancet | apples49 | 
January 10, 2014 4:40 pm
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By Carolyn Thomas, October 25, 2010 @ 8:02 pm
Thank you so much for this.
It is enlightening yet troubling at the same time, given that Crestor emerged as the darling of the cardiology world after JUPITER. As a heart attack survivor, I happened to be attending the Science & Leadership Symposium For Women With Heart Disease at Mayo Clinic in Rochester when the JUPITER news hit, and it was big news indeed!
It was only later that small cracks began to appear publicly that seemed to question, as Dr. Guyatt does so eloquently here, the whiz-bang results of these (too short) trials.
One major question was the tricky conflict-of-interest disclosures, including of course that JUPITER was actually funded by AstraZeneca, the very drug company that makes Crestor. The study’s lead author Dr. Paul Ridker has previously been on the receiving end of cash from the same company. In fact, nine of the 14 authors of the JUPITER study have financial ties to AstraZeneca. Ridker also happens to hold the legal patent on CRP blood-testing technology that stands to explode in sales if his JUPITER study’s recommendations are widely accepted by cardiologists worldwide. All of these facts combined suggest clear conflicts of interest.
More on this at: “When Medical Research Is Funded To Favour The Drug, Not The Facts” on THE ETHICAL NAG: MARKETING ETHICS FOR THE EASILY SWAYED - http://ethicalnag.org/2010/07/19/jupiter-results-questioned/