Industry Payments to Rheumatologists Ought to Be Going Down, Not Up

Mitchell, Aaron P.

doi:10.1002/art.41898

Cited by 1 publication

(1 citation statement)

References 15 publications

(17 reference statements)

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“…Rather than viewing the acceptance of industry payments as a black‐and‐white moral dilemma, receipt of such payments should be viewed in a nuanced quantitative, rather than qualitative, manner. The blanket assessment that “industry payments to rheumatologists ought to be going down, not up” ( 10 ) may need to be tempered. The fact that our rheumatology journals (and presumably most, if not all, reputable medical journals) publish numerous papers from authors who have received (and likely will continue to receive) substantial payments from industry is prima facie evidence that acceptance of industry payments does not trigger a moral death knell.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Industry Payments to United States Rheumatologist‐Authors of Publications in High‐Impact Rheumatology Journals

Stohl,

Parikh

2023

ACR Open Rheumatology

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ObjectiveA skewed percentage of industry payments goes to “key opinion leaders” (KOLs) whose prominence and influence has increased with time. Given that KOL is neither precisely defined nor quantifiable, we turned to the level of industry payments as a surrogate quantifiable metric and assessed the associations between industry payments to US rheumatologists and their authorships of publications in high‐impact rheumatology journals.MethodsPayments to US rheumatologists during the 2015‐2020 interval were obtained from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Open Payments database, and authorships were tallied for calendar year 2021 publications in the four rheumatology journals (Lancet Rheumatol, Nat Rev Rheumatol, Ann Rheum Dis, Arthritis Rheumatol) with the highest 2021 journal impact factors and journal citation indicators. Differences between groups were determined by chi‐squared test, unpaired Student's t‐test, one‐way analysis of variance (ANOVA), Mann–Whitney rank sum test, and Kruskal–Wallis one‐way ANOVA on ranks. Correlations were calculated using Spearman rank order. A P value ≤0.05 was considered significant.ResultsThere were 278 individual US rheumatologists who received industry payments and served as authors of publications in the four high‐impact rheumatology journals. Non–research‐associated payments to these individuals strongly correlated with research‐associated payments. Payments to male US rheumatologists were greater than those to their female counterparts, and payments strongly correlated with the number of publications among male authors but only weakly, and often not significantly, among female authors.ConclusionA substantial fraction of the authorships in calendar year 2021 publications in four high‐impact rheumatology journals arose from a very small percentage of all US rheumatologists who had received industry payments during the 2015‐2020 interval. Payments to male US rheumatologist‐authors were strikingly different from those to female US rheumatologist‐authors, and further investigation is needed to explain the glaring difference in payments.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%