Prescription for Change?
Are physicians fully informed while prescribing pills? That's a good question.
When it comes to psychiatric medications, it's also a fair question.
The issue at hand here is publication bias – the topic of a new paper just published by OHSU/Portland VA researcher Dr. Erick Turner.
The link to the full article is here.
So what is publication bias?
Here’s an excerpt from an ABC News story which explains:
Researchers running drug trials are required to submit detailed results to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But when it comes to reporting trial results publicly in medical journals, “it’s an entirely different ballgame,” according to Dr. Erick Turner, lead author of a study published today in PLoS Medicine.
Turner and colleagues reviewed the results submitted to the FDA for eight antipsychotic drugs used to treat schizophrenia. They then compared the results to those published in medical journals. Four trials submitted to the FDA, all of which had unflattering results for the drug under study, were unpublished.
Later on…we’ll hear from Dr. Turner himself.
