Byetta Danger? Depends Who You're Talking To

In my recent post on the diabetes drug, Byetta, I mentioned one of the problems that I see for patients and consumers in the area of drug research: bias.  When you see the results of a study mentioned in the press, you should not take it at face value.  Find out who the authors of the study were and whether they reported any financial conflicts.  Financial conflicts of interest are a serious problem in medicine and in medical research in the United States and elsewhere in the world.  In fact, a former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the most highly respected medical journal in the world, wrote a book about it a few years ago.  And NEJM itself has had its' own problems with conflict disclosure, one having been well publicized about a VIOXX study it published.  These problems came to mind recently when I read an article about a debate that took place last week in Lisbon, Portugal at a diabetes conference over the findings of the UCLA researchers who published a study in Gastroenterology which showed a strong link between Byetta, pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer.

The authors of the study, a Dr. Smith and Dr. Butler, presented their findings at the conference in Lisbon, which showed higher rates of pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer in patients who took Byetta.  These findings were disputed by another doctor at the conference, Michael Nauck, MD, of the Diabetes Center Bad Lauterberg, in Harz, Germany.  Dr. Nauck countered the findings of the UCLA researchers indicating that one of the reasons for the results of the study were because there has been an increased awareness of the potential link between Byetta and pancreatitis after a recent FDA warning, and that this caused an increase in the reporting of such conditions.  Since then, the number of reported events has declined, according to Dr. Nauck.  Sounds reasonable, right?  Then I kept reading the article about this in medpage Today.  At the bottom of the article in a blue-shaded block was some very important information.  It stated:

Smith and Butler reported no conflicts of interest.

Nauck reported relationships with Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, sanofi-aventis, MSD, Novartis, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Takeda and Boehringer Ingelheim.

Aside from the fact that Dr. Nauck obviously has close financial ties with many pharmaceutical companies, the operative company name is Eli Lilly.  Eli Lilly and Company, along with Amylin Pharmaceuticals, Inc., jointly developed and launched Byetta into the market in April 2005.

I rest my case.