Bias in Antipsychotic Trials

Publication Bias in Antipsychotic Trials: An Analysis of Efficacy Comparing the Published

 Literature to the US Food and Drug Administration Database

Background

People assume that, when they are ill, health-care professionals will ensure that they get the best available treatment. But how do clinicians know which treatment is likely to be most effective? In the past, clinicians used their own experience to make such decisions. Nowadays, they rely on evidence-based medicine—the systematic review and appraisal of trials, studies that investigate the efficacy and safety of medical interventions in patients. Evidence-based medicine can guide clinicians, however, only if all the results from clinical trials are published in an unbiased manner. Unfortunately, “publication bias” is common. For example, the results of trials in which a new drug did not perform better than existing drugs or in which it had unwanted side effects often remain unpublished. Moreover, published trials can be subject to outcome reporting bias—the publication may only include those trial outcomes that support the use of the new treatment rather than presenting all the available data./.../