Inter-regional differences of authorship in secondary analyses of solid malignancies.

Abstract

e13661 Background: With the increasing number of clinical trials and data availability in recent years, the number of secondary analyses had subsequently increased at a global level. However, the results of such analyses must be interpreted carefully. Our study aimed to study the differences of secondary analyses based on the country of residence of the first author. Methods: We searched OVID database for articles subgroup analyses from the year 2000 until Feb 15, 2022. post-hoc, subgroup, secondary, cancer, tumor, breast, colorectal were some of the terms used in the search. Original trials, observational and secondary analyses of cohort studies were excluded. The country of the first author was used for categorizing the articles. Results: 1491 articles were included in final analysis. The first authors of 646 articles were from North America (43.9%), 476 articles from Europe (32.4%), 258 articles from East Asia (17.6%), and 86 articles from the rest of the globe (5.9%). There was a significant increase in the number of secondary analyses from East Asia especially in the last 4 years (<.001). In addition, East Asian secondary analyses were more likely to have had medical writing assistance compared to other regions (<.001). North American contribution to secondary analyses has been decreasing over the years (<.001). European analyses and analyses from the rest of the world didn’t have a significant increase over the years. Although European publication were less likely to be funded, those that were funded had a higher chance of being funded by pharmaceutical companies in comparison to the different regions (<.001). International trials that included US and non-US participants were more likely to be funded by pharmaceutical companies, had medical writing assistance, and had a higher percentage of authors with conflicts of interest than trials that only included US participants or non-US participants (<.001). Conclusions: The results show that there was an increase in secondary analyses especially from the East Asian region and those secondary analyses of international trials are highly funded and supported by pharmaceutical companies. [Table: see text]