Meta-analyses with industry involvement are massively published and report no caveats for antidepressants

Next-generation systematic reviews: prospective meta-analysis, individual-level data, networks and umbrella reviews

“…Probably thousands of systematic reviews, including hundreds of sophisticated network meta-analyses, are currently conducted by contractor companies, hired mostly by industry 31. Much of their work is not published and it is possible that what gets published is biased in favour of the sponsor 32. Academic or commercial conflicts of interest may affect any systematic review, no matter how sophisticated.…”

Network meta-analysis: the highest level of medical evidence?

“…For instance, meta-analyses on antidepressant drugs are far less likely to report negative statements, if review authors have conflicts of interest 35. Pharmaceutical companies are regularly involved in performing network meta-analyses,5 and in one survey, 19 contracting companies reported that they had performed a total of 476 network meta-analyses, only to publish 102 of them (21%) 36.…”

The Hidden Costs of Financial Conflicts of Interest in Medicine

“…However, authors of meta-analyses are only required to disclose their financial interests and are unlikely to detail the source of funding of the studies that were included. In a recent paper, Ebrahim et al [25] examined conflicts of interest in meta-analyses concerned with antidepressant drugs. In nearly two thirds of cases, the authors were either employees of the assessed drug manufacturer or had some industry links.…”

“…In nearly two thirds of cases, the authors were either employees of the assessed drug manufacturer or had some industry links. In these cases, negative or simply cautionary statements in the concluding statement of the abstract were unlikely to appear [25] . EBM, with its emphasis on systematic reviews and guidelines, offered an unprecedented marketing arm to special interest groups [26] .…”