Financial ties found among clinical trials

More than one-third of experts charged with overseeing clinical trials at medical schools and research hospitals have financial ties to companies that sell pharmaceuticals and medical devices, according to survey results released Wednesday.

The report found that nearly 7% of experts discussed or voted on clinical studies sponsored by companies they had relationships with or by competitors of those companies -- a conflict of interest under federal rules.

The survey, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the first to provide a broad look at financial conflicts of interest among people who sit on institutional review boards.

The review boards, whose members may include doctors, nurses and community residents, are charged with ensuring the scientific validity of clinical trials and protecting the safety of patients who participate in them.

Every institution that conducts human research and receives federal funds is required to have an institutional review board.

The influence of industry on medical research is a growing concern, with much of the recent scrutiny directed at physicians who conduct and report on clinical trials in which they have a financial interest.

In July, the Journal of the American Medical Assn. tightened its disclosure policies after several cases in which authors of research reports failed to reveal their financial ties to drug companies.

For the latest study, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and the University of Massachusetts sent surveys to 893 review board members at 100 institutions and got 574 responses.

The participants were anonymous.

Thirty-six percent said they had at least one financial relationship with a company during the previous year.

Such relationships included corporate funding of research, consulting for a company, receiving royalties for an invention, owning stock, and sitting on a corporate board.

More than 85% of survey respondents said their colleagues’ relationships didn’t influence their decisions.

One-third of review board members said either their institution did not have a formal process for disclosing financial ties, or that they didn’t know of such a process.

Eric G. Campbell, a health policy expert at Massachusetts General Hospital and lead author of the study, said it wasn’t possible to eliminate relationships between academia and industry.

Scientists rely on companies for research funding, and companies rely on academic centers to test new products.

Because of this, review boards need to strengthen their disclosure policies and do a better job of policing conflicts, Campbell said.

The failure of some board members to recuse themselves when they had a conflict of interest was worrisome, he added.

Susan L. Rose, executive director of USC’s Office for the Protection of Research Subjects, said academic institutions had been reassessing their policies and discussing the need for mandatory disclosures.

Members of USC’s review board disclose their conflicts at every meeting, but the practice isn’t required, she said.

“Mandatory disclosure is the gold standard,” said Rose, who was not involved in the study.

In a related report in the journal, patients in cancer-research trials said they would not have changed their minds about participating in the studies had they known in advance about the financial ties between researchers and drug companies.

Senior author Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel of the National Institutes of Health said patients did not want the additional burden of sorting out conflicts of interest and they assumed that an “oversight system” was in place to protect their interests.

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denise.gellene@latimes.com