Healthy Skepticism Library item: 10756

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Publication type: Journal Article

Day M.
Clinical trial results often overstate benefits of treatment
BMJ 2007 Jun 30; 334:(7608):1341
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/334/7608/1341

Abstract:

Failings in the way that clinical trials are designed and presented may lead doctors to overstate the benefit of treatments, experts warned last week.

The conference on clinical trials, organised by the James Lind Alliance and the Lancet and held at the Royal Society of Medicine in London, also heard that key groups of participants were often excluded from clinical studies and as a result were denied the benefits of evidence based medicine. Stephen Holgate, professor of immunopharmacology at Southampton University, said that children and elderly people were “especially neglected” in this area.

As another example he noted that the routine exclusion of smokers from asthma studies meant that it has only recently been discovered that inhaled steroids do not work in this group-decades after millions of smokers began taking these drugs for their asthma.

Professor Holgate said, “In order to redress the balance, more real world ‘effectiveness’ studies are . . .