Herbal Remedy Clinical Trials in the Media: bias

[Guest guest]

Here's link to the whole-text article:

Herbal Remedy Clinical Trials in the Media: a Comparison with the

Coverage of Conventional Pharmaceuticals

Tania Bubela, Boon and Caulfield

BMC Medicine 2008, 6:35 doi:10.1186/1741-7015-6-35

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/6/35/abstract

Background

This study systematically compares newspaper coverage of clinical trials

for herbal remedies, a popular type of complementary and alternative

medicine (CAM), with clinical trials for pharmaceuticals using a

comparative content analysis. This is a timely inquiry given the

recognized importance of the popular press as a source of health

information, the complex and significant role of CAM in individual

health care decisions, and the trend toward evidence based research for

some CAM therapies.

Methods

We searched PubMed for clinical trials, Lexis/Nexis for newspaper

articles in the UK, US, Australia/NZ, and Factiva for Canadian newspaper

articles from 1995-2005. We used a coding frame to analyse and compare

48 pharmaceutical and 57 herbal remedy clinical trials as well as 201

pharmaceutical and 352 herbal remedy newspaper articles.

Results

Herbal remedy clinical trials had similar Jadad scores to pharmaceutical

trials but were significantly smaller and of shorter duration. The

trials were mostly studies from western countries and published in

high-ranking journals. The majority of pharmaceutical (64%) and herbal

remedy (53%) clinical trials had private sector funding involvement. The

minority declared further author conflicts of interest. Newspaper

coverage of herbal remedy clinical trials was more negative than for

pharmaceutical trials; a result only partly explained by the greater

proportion of herbal remedy clinical trials reporting negative results

(p=0.0201; chi2 = 7.8129; DF = 2). Errors of omission were common in

newspaper coverage, with little reporting of dose, sample size, location

and duration of the trial, methods, trial funding and conflicts of

interest. There was an under-reporting of risks, especially for herbal

remedies.

Conclusions

Our finding of negative coverage of herbal remedy trials is contrary to

the positive trends in most published research based primarily on

anecdotal accounts. Our results highlight how media coverage is not

providing the public with the information necessary to make informed

decisions about medical treatments. Most concerning is the lack of

disclosure of trial funding and conflicts of interest that could

influence the outcome or reporting of trial results. This lack of

reporting may impact the medical research community who have the most to

lose by way of public trust and respect.

..