Study: Researchers with Glaxo ties favored Avandia

As mentioned in my previous post on the MIT controversy surrounding an economist's testifying to Congress on healthcare policy without revealing possible economic conflicts of interest that could affect his views, frequently expressed on this blog are concerns about undisclosed conflicts of interest and their corrosive effects upon healthcare (query link).

One major question that arises is the degree to which conflicts of interest can affect the integrity of the scientific literature. Answering this question is more a matter of social science research rather than biomedical inquiry.

One internal medicine resident at the Mayo Clinic took on this challenge and published such a study, a systematic review, in the British Medical Journal. It is entitled "Association between industry affiliation and position on cardiovascular risk with rosiglitazone: cross sectional systematic review" (BMJ 2010;340:c1344).

Mayo Clinical researchers led by the resident, Amy Wang, examined more than 200 articles that appeared after an analysis in the NEJM linked Avandia to a 43 percent increased risk of heart attacks, and a subsequent clinical trial found no greater danger of heart disease. The results are fascinating. From a summary in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

"We aimed to determine whether financial conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical manufacturers could be fueling this fire," wrote the researchers, led by Amy Wang, a resident in internal medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "From our findings, it appears that the answer is yes.

From the BMJ article itself, free full text available as of this writing at link above:

For each article, we sought information about the authors’ financial conflicts of interest in the report itself and elsewhere (that is, in all publications within two years of the original publication and online). Two reviewers blinded to the authors’ financial relationships independently classified each article as presenting a favourable (that is, rosiglitazone does not increase the risk of myocardial infarction), neutral, or unfavourable view on the risk of myocardial infarction with rosiglitazone and on recommendations on the use of the drug.

The "and elsewhere" can be a valuable addition to the capabilities of today's researchers, often enabled via the internet (e.g., non-literature based resources such as conference brochures, personal web pages, corporate and other financial disclosures. etc.) when articles themselves prove unrevealing.

Overall, this is a straightforward methodology, and while potentially subject to bias and expertise issues, nonetheless seems an excellent new contribution to the needed social research on undisclosed COI's.

As to results (see the full article for statistical details I am omitting here):

Of the 202 included articles, 108 (53%) had a conflict of interest statement. Ninety authors (45%) had financial conflicts of interest. Authors who had a favourable view of the risk of myocardial infarction with rosiglitazone were more likely to have financial conflicts of interest with manufacturers of antihyperglycaemic agents in general, and with rosiglitazone manufacturers in particular, than authors who had an unfavourable view. There was likewise a strong association between favourable recommendations on the use of rosiglitazone and financial conflicts of interest. These links persisted when articles rather than authors were used as the unit of analysis, when the analysis was restricted to opinion articles or to articles in which the rosiglitazone controversy was the main focus, and both in articles published before and after the Food and Drug Administration issued a safety warning for rosiglitazone.

While causality is not proven, these results are still stunning. Per the Inquirer's summary:

... Almost 90 percent of scientists who wrote positive articles, reviews, or commentaries about Avandia had financial ties to London-based Glaxo, the study published in the British Medical Journal found.

Almost three of every four authors who expressed negative views of the drug had no financial ties to manufacturers of diabetes medicines, while just 6 percent of those with positive opinions of the drug received no funding or fees from industry.

The authors cite prior literature also demonstrating an associations of COI with pro-industry views (references 2-6; #2 is regarding the mid 1990's calcium channel blocker controversy).

The authors observe that:

In the past decade, research and policy has focused on this association [between COI and pro-industry views - ed.], leading to important progress in policies to manage and encourage disclosure of such financial conflicts of interest.

Their findings about the effects of this "progress" was particularly disappointing, that only about half of the articles carried conflict-of-interest statements:

Of the 202 eligible studies (10 reported original research, 91 were letters, editorials, or commentaries, and 101 were reviews, meta-analyses, or guidelines), 108 articles (53%) included a conflict of interest statement. [The other 47% did not - ed.]

One wonders about the publishers of the articles themselves omitting COI statements, either acknowledging possible COI's or confirming that no COI's exist.

... A total of 90 (45%) of the 202 articles were authored by individuals who had financial conflicts of interest. Of the 90 studies with conflicts of interest, 69 (77%) had a statement disclosing the conflict of interest in the article itself. The other 21 studies with financial conflicts of interest (23%) did not disclose these relationships, which were discovered through searching other publications by the same author or the internet. Three (14%) of these 21 studies published a statement declaring no conflicts of interest. [Oops - ed.]

So, almost one quarter of articles with author COI did not disclose that fact, and several misrepresented the issue.

Finally, the pharmaceutical company's view, also published in the Inquirer article cited above:

A Glaxo spokeswoman said the company posted information and results from all its clinical trials on its Web site.

"It's vital that people have trust in the way we do research and the way it's made public," Jo Revill, Glaxo spokeswoman, said yesterday. "Part of that is sharing data. What we have done is develop policies that will have disclosure and encourage disclosure."

"Encouraging" disclosure of COI's is far too weak a stand for a pharmaceutical company to take on such a critical issue, in my view.

The Mayo researchers wisely conclude:

Disclosure rates for financial conflicts of interest were unexpectedly low, and there was a clear and strong link between the orientation of authors’ expressed views on the rosiglitazone controversy and their financial conflicts of interest with pharmaceutical companies. Although these findings do not necessarily indicate a causal link between the position taken on the cardiac risk of rosiglitazone in patients with diabetes and the authors’ financial conflicts of interest, they underscore the need for further changes in disclosure procedures in order for the scientific record to be trusted.

Finally, I add that these findings are not too surprising. It's human nature not to bite the hand that feeds you. Money is also a powerful stimulant to the brain's rationalization (as opposed to rational) centers.

We as a culture do truly need to understand the potential corrosive effects on the scientific literature of dysfunctions such as ghostwriting, financial and other conflicts of interest, publish-or-perish pressures of academia, and other such social issues.

These practices also simply need to be abolished, for as I have written before on these pages ("Has Ghostwriting Infected The Experts With Tainted Knowledge, Creating Vectors for Further Spread and Mutation of the Scientific Knowledge Base?"), once a "critical mass" of faux knowledge is put into circulation via the scientific literature, even the ostensibly impartial experts' views can become tainted, dependent as they are on that very same scientific literature. Even worse, we don't know what that critical mass is - or whether we've reached it already.

-- SS

Post Title → Study: Researchers with Glaxo ties favored Avandia

Was GSK Merely Incompetent About Medical Informatics, Or Is There a Management Directive To Avoid Specialists Who Might Find "Unacceptable" Problems?

At my post "GSK, Avandia and Medical Informatics: More on Why Pharma Fails" I outlined repeated rejection of Medical Informatics expertise by GSK, based on what I believed essentially to be the narrowminded and tunnel-visioned thinking of information technologists and others in pharma. I wrote:

It is my belief that a view [at GSK] of medical informatics professionals as "writers of algorithms to solve business problems" reflects a fundamentally narrow and mechanistic view of the field, or perhaps a mislabeling of the position as being one of Medical Informatics. The lack of a requirement for formal Medical Informatics education and training suggests the latter.

The U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences seems to agree with that assessment, as I pointed out in another post entitled "IOM gets it regarding Medical Informatics." The IOM recommends:

...that CDER [FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research] build internal epidemiologic and informatics capacity in order to improve the postmarket assessment of drugs. In recognition of the limitations in human resources in the current employment market to meet this role, a combination of advancing professional skills through continuing education and support for academic training programs is needed.

and that

Informatics experts should track progress on the national health-information infrastructure, look for opportunities to gather information about drug safety and efficacy after approval, coordinate partnerships with external groups to study the use of electronic health records for [drug] adverse event surveillance, participate in FDA’s already strong role in setting national standards and track the development of tools for data analysis in industry and academe, and encourage the incorporation of the tools into FDA practice where appropriate.

A story in today's Wall Street Journal raises additional questions about what appeared to simply be strategic missteps in talent management (recognition and acquisition of new and/or enhanced skills and emerging fields of value to an organization).

Perhaps these were not strategic missteps at all, but simply a manifestation of a calculated policy set at higher levels to avoid discovering - beyond a certain point and before a certain time - information that might adversely affect a new drug's FDA acceptance, marketing, and sales. This might be accomplished through what might be called "internal capabilities inhibition via talent mismanagement."

The WSJ story today reports on actual directed, purposeful attempts by GSK to suppress possible adverse effects information about Avandia, as well as silence a number of its clinician critics. Those critics had prescribed the drug in good faith to their patients and noted troubling responses in the form of heart failure and pulmonary hypertensive (high pressure in the arteries of the lungs) side effects.

Wall Street Journal
Nov. 19, 2008

Doctors Claim Glaxo Dismissed Worries on Avandia (subscription required)

Drug Maker Tried to Make Physician at Maryland Hospital Stop Talking About Concerns; Company Defends Its Effort

By ALICIA MUNDY

HAGERSTOWN, Md. -- Last year, after news broke that the diabetes drug Avandia was linked to a high risk of heart attacks, reports that the drug's maker had tried to stifle safety questions from a prominent Duke University researcher years earlier provoked a furor.

Now it turns out that the Duke researcher wasn't alone in suggesting a tie to heart problems. A doctor from a small Maryland hospital [Internist Mary Money of Hagerstown, Md.] linked Avandia to congestive heart failure in 2000, but the drug's maker, GlaxoSmithKline PLC, rejected her warning and tried to make her stop talking about it with other doctors and hospitals, according to documents and interviews.

... The Senate and House in 2007 began looking at whether Glaxo suppressed information and threatened the Duke researcher, charges that Glaxo has denied. Now the Senate probe, led by Chuck Grassley of Iowa, is investigating whether Glaxo's efforts to defend Avandia's safety led to intimidation against other doctors who were suggesting possible links to cardiac dangers. Mr. Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, has demanded documents from Glaxo and is expected to release a detailed report on Avandia soon, according to staffers.

Earlier in 2007, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine reported that Avandia could raise the risk of heart attack by 43%. The FDA called for a black-box warning on the drug's label about the risk of congestive heart failure and heart attack.

Dr. Money talked recently about a patient who came to her in 1999 with congestive heart failure. "That fall, I had a woman patient with massive fluid overload and such shortness of breath that she had to sit up at night," she said.

The patient had begun taking Avandia two weeks earlier, and an echocardiogram showed high pressure in the arteries of the lungs. Dr. Money said she took the patient off the drug, and within a few days the symptoms almost disappeared.

In the next few months, Dr. Money and the head of the hospital's diabetes center, Stephen Lippman, found other patients who had similar symtoms.

Dr. Money alerted SmithKline Beecham, the name of the drug maker before a 2001 merger. The company met with her and Dr. Lippman at Washington County Hospital in Hagerstown in April 2000.

The two doctors presented data on 85 of their patients who had used Avandia, according to documents from the meeting. More than half of the patients had significant edema, or swelling, and about half of that group also had high pulmonary pressure and shortness of breath. Three had been hospitalized for congestive heart failure.

The meeting was a waste of time, Dr. Money said. "They came to tell us how wrong we were, not to listen," she said.

Meanwhile, a company consultant who called into the meeting from the University of Pennsylvania dismissed the Hagerstown doctors' echocardiograms as too poor to show anything useful.

"They suggested we were country bumpkins, and practically said, 'Don't worry your pretty heads. We have smarter people than you looking at this, and there's no problem,'" recalled Dr. Lippman, a physician who also holds a doctorate in molecular biology.

A GlaxoSmithKline spokeswoman, Mary Ann Rhyne, said Dr. Money's theories were "unsubstantiated" and she was misinterpreting journal articles to support her case.

The next month, two SmithKline executives wrote to the hospital's chief of staff, calling on him to stop Dr. Money from talking about her concerns to other hospital doctors.

"[W]e respectfully ask that your hospital not involve itself in the dissemination of information which has not been substantially verified, and that you take immediate steps to stop the dissemination of this unsubstantiated information to your medical staff," said the letter, signed by two SmithKline executives, which was viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

In effect, GSK is saying that these clinicians had no "right" to report their "unsubstantiated" findings to anyone without the company's "approval." That is the height of corporate hubris, especially in a country where freedom of speech and freedom of opinion is constitutionally guaranteed.

Unless these clinicians were fabricating their findings with ill intent, they certainly had very right to report their findings to anyone they chose. It is up to those so informed to make up their own minds based on the evidence and on trust.

But I state the obvious.

The company acted in a manner that might be construed as interference with medical practice and communication, and it seems to me potential interference with employment, by going to these doctor's superior. One must ask, who, exactly, did the company believe was required to perform the "substantiation" of adverse events information before the private clinicians could speak to others?

GlaxoSmithKline's Ms. Rhyne said the letter was justified. "When GSK learns about statements by physicians that are inconsistent with the scientific data on its medicines, it has the responsibility to do what it can to correct these inaccuracies," she said.

Resonsibility to whom, exactly? Its shareholders seem high on that list. Where do patients fit in to the taxonomy of corporate responsibility ?

It would seem to me the company also has the responsibility to maximize its ability to identify adverse events as soon as possible and as scientifically as possible, and conduct its talent management activities in a manner to enhance that capability.

Glaxo upgraded the warnings on Avandia's label more than a dozen times between 1999 and the 2007 black box, the strongest level of warning. One change, in 2001, said the drug could lead to excessive edema, which in turn could lead to congestive heart failure.

Better late than never.

Or perhaps not so much. From Alison Bass's blog:

It was not until 2007, after The New England Journal of Medicine published a meta-analysis showing an increased risk of heart failure among patients taking Avandia, that the FDA put black box warnings on the drug. (It's worth noting that researchers would never have been able to do this meta-analysis if not for the New York State Attorney General's lawsuit against GlaxoSmithKline for deceiving physicians and consumers about another of its drugs, the antidepressant Paxil; as part of settling that lawsuit, Glaxo agreed to post the findings of all its clinical trials, including those about Avandia).

Of one thing I am certain: diabetics did not need the additional problems caused by this drug before the black box warnings, when other proven, effective and less expensive therapies were readily available.

Perhaps that warning might have appeared sooner if GSK officials had not taken the stance that the value of Medical Informatics professionals is simply "to write algorithms to solve business problems." I wonder if a strategy of managing the narrative through questionable practices such as bullying and intimidation, while rejecting new fields of scientific endeavor, might be two sides of the same coin. (My own experiences are admittedly anecdotal, but formally trained medical informatics professionals are rare in pharma, and even at Merck I was kept an arm's length from adverse events informatics activities despite pointing out my expertise, for reasons never explained satisfactorily.)

My jobseeking experiences with SKB/GSK on informatics date back to 1996 or so. Rejections were the rule, even in one case in 2000 when I came highly recommended by their own senior internal recruiter after demonstrating the information system I built at a major hospital to detect drug and device adverse events in the field of invasive cardiology, and in 2004 when I again came highly recommended by their own retained British recruiter at Armstrong Craven Ltd.

I therefore raise the question:

Could my experiences and that of other informaticists with special competencies in building clinical IT to enhance adverse events data management have been a manifestation of a larger, somewhat unpublicized strategy? That is, a strategy meant to inhibit or suppress the employment and empowerment of individuals with formal training and expertise in newer scientific domains that might prematurely "endanger" the lifecycle of blockbuster drugs?

Perhaps the talent management activities, minutes, and hiring/layoff practices of relevant GSK departments and divisions should be scrutinized, in addition to the current Congressional scrutiny of specific instances of corporate arrogance as in today's WSJ article.

-- SS

Post Title → Was GSK Merely Incompetent About Medical Informatics, Or Is There a Management Directive To Avoid Specialists Who Might Find "Unacceptable" Problems?

More Drug Pricing Fraud Allegations

From the Philadelphia Inquirer, a story that GlaxoSmithKline has settled for $150.8 million US Department of Justice charges that the company fraudulantly overbilled Medicare and Medicaid. The alleged scheme involved inflating average wholesale prices for Zofran and Kytril used to set reimbursement rates. The settlement is unrelated to another lawsuit brought by consumer groups, health plans, insurers, and state attorneys general that contends GlaxoSmithKline inflated prices for other drugs which is pending in US District Court in Boston. The Inquirer noted that GlaxoSmithKline settled another suit in April 2003 which had alleged violations of the federal Medicaid rebate law.
Lest anyone think that this is an issue exclusive to the US, last week the London Times reported that the UK government has charged executives of six UK based generic drug companies of conspiring to defraud the UK National Health Service (NHS). Allegations involve price-fixing for some widely used drugs, such as penicillin based antibiotics and warfarin. The defendants worked for Kent Pharmaceuticals, Norton Healthcare, the Goldshield Group, Generics UK, Ranbaxy Laboratories UK Unit and Regent-GM Laboratories Ltd. Two firms, Generics UK and Ranbaxy, have already settled.
This is just the latest of many stories about bad behavior by leadership of pharmaceutical companies. (This is not to say that we haven't also seen many stories about bad behavior by leadership of biotechnology and device companies, managed care organizations and insurers, and hospitals, academic medical centers, and medical schools.) Nonetheless, stories like this should be contrasted with the the laissez faire attitude some physicians' assocations (see posts here and here) and medical schools and academic health centers (see post here) have about taking pharmaceutical companies' money. Bernard Carroll's proposal that physicians' associations should apply ethical standards when deciding which drug companies' money they should accept deserves serious consideration.

Post Title → More Drug Pricing Fraud Allegations