| Ref ID | 475 |
| First Author | P. C. Gøtzsche |
| Journal | BMJ |
| Year Of Publishing | 2012 |
| URL | https://www.bmj.com/content/345/bmj.e7031.long |
| Keywords |
• Pulmonology • Expertise • Cochrane • Stakeholder • Disclosure |
| Problem(s) |
• Lack of clinical expert/ stakeholder/ user perspective • Financial conflicts of interest of review authors |
| Article Type | Editorial |
| Article Subtype | Discussion piece |
| First Author Country | United States |
| Aim | The authors discuss examples of where inclusion of clinical/ content experts in the systematic review team can lead to undue influences on the review process, arising from allegiances/conflicts of interest of content experts. The authors describe a Cochrane systematic review of intravenous alpha-1 antitrypsin augmentation therapy for treating patients with alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency and lung disease. |
| Level of Investigation | Descriptive |
| Summary of Findings | The authors describe difficulties with publishing the systematic review as a Cochrane review due to the withdrawal of content expert as a co-author of the review once the evidence to demonstrate the clinical and cost effectiveness of the drug was found to be insufficient. The content expert conducted the only two trials of the intervention and also had a financial conflict of interest in relation to one of the companies marketing alpha-1 antitrypsin. The authors recommend that, by default, teams performing systematic reviews and meta-analyses should not include content area experts as authors |
| Number of systematic reviews included | 1 |
| Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed | 1 |
| Treatment impacted | No |
| Treatment impacted description | |
| Interpretation impacted | Not Applicable |
| Interpretation impacted description |