Dallas Fort Worth Injury Lawyer Blog
Researchers say trials of Pfizer Inc.’s Neurontin epilepsy treatment for uses that were not yet approved may have been altered to emphasize favorable results.
Comparisons of internal company documents with published data from 12 clinical trials found inconsistencies between data that made it into the medical journals and findings from the original trials, according to a report in the New England Journal of Medicine. Discrepancies included reports of positive results from trials that were initially found to be negative, and primary study goals reported as secondary study goals.
Pfizer paid $430 million in criminal fines and civil penalties in 2004 for urging doctors to prescribe Neurontin for off-label uses. The drugmaker said the new review isn’t credible and the company didn’t attempt to mislead the medical community.
“The trouble is, as a scientist, the publication has always been held up to me as the truth,” said Kay Dickersin, a professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and an author of the study. “It’s the scientific record. What this study indicated is we can’t believe that record.”
The company documents were obtained as a result of litigation against Pfizer and a subsidiary for promoting Neurontin, or gabapentin, for so-called off-label uses, or those not approved by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, according to the journal report.
Dickersin said she was an expert witness for the prosecution in litigation against Pfizer. She agreed to participate on the condition that she be allowed to publish information from unsealed documents, and she diverted her earnings to related Johns Hopkins research, she said.
Of 21 primary study objectives of off-label uses of Neurontin described in original documents, six weren’t included in published reports and four were reported as secondary goals, according to the study in the journal. For eight of the 12 published trials, the definition of the primary study goal differed between the original and published documents.
Seven of the nine trials published as full-length research articles reported statistically significant results for the study’s main goal, and in more than half of those, the outcome differed between the published account and the original documents, the study showed.
If you or a family member has been personally injured because of the fault of someone else: by the use of dangerous and defective drugs, bad products, or toxic injury etc then please contact the Dallas Texas Defective Drugs Product Liability Attorney Dr. Shezad Malik. For a no obligation, free case analysis, please call 817-255-4001 or Contact Me Online.