Alcohol, cardiovascular disease and industry funding: A co-authorship network analysis of systematic reviews

Ref ID 787
First Author S. Golder
Journal SOCIAL SCIENCE & MEDICINE
Year Of Publishing 2021
URL https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953621007826
Keywords • Team
• Allegiance
• Disclosure
• Non-Cochrane reviews
• Cardiology
• Outcomes
• Sponsorship bias
• Author
Problem(s) • Conflict of interest statement or disclosures for review authors missing
• Failure to define clinically meaningful outcomes
• Financial conflicts of interest of review authors
Article Type Empirical
Article Subtype Cross-sectional survey/Methodological systematic review
First Author Country United Kingdom
Aim To assess the impacts and patterns of co-authorship on systematic reviews of alcohol and cardiovascular disease, with particular attention given to industry funding, indexed in Epistemonikos up to May 6, 2020.
Level of Investigation Analytical
Summary of Findings From 60 included systematic reviews on the impacts on alcohol on cardiovascular disease indexed in Epistemonikos up to May 06, 2020. Those with industry funding were more likely to study broader outcomes such as ‘cardiovascular disease’ or ‘coronary heart disease’ as opposed to specific cardiovascular disease issues such as hypertension or stroke (93% [13/14] versus 41% [19/46]) (chi-squared 12.4, p < 0.001) and have more included studies (mean of 29 versus 20). They were also more widely cited by others.
Number of systematic reviews included 60
Number of eligible systematic reviews assessed 1844
Treatment impacted Yes
Treatment impacted description
Interpretation impacted Yes
Interpretation impacted description All reviews by authors with histories of alcohol industry support identified a health protective effect of alcohol, whereas those with no known history of support were approximately evenly divided.