In this week’s press release:
- Findings depend on who has funded the research
- Vascular endothelial growth factor mediates intracrine survival in human breast carcinoma cells through internally expressed VEGFR 1/FLT1
- Donors and international health agencies are failing Africa on malaria control
- Teaching global health at the frontlines
Findings depend on who has funded the research
Research on the effectiveness of a major class of drug – statins, used to reduce cholesterol – has come under the spotlight in a new article published in PLoS Medicine. There are several statins now on the market and many research trials have compared different brands of statin ‘head-to-head’. The authors of the article looked at nearly 200 such trials, some were funded by governments, some by pharmaceutical companies, and in some cases the source of the funding had not been made clear. The authors found that trials of head-to-head comparisons were more likely to report results and conclusions favouring the sponsor’s own product than the drug with which it was compared
Lisa Bero and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco argue that their findings show that the type of sponsorship available for randomized controlled trials of statins was strongly linked to the results and conclusions of those studies, even when other factors were taken into account. However, it is not clear from this study why sponsorship has such a strong link to the overall findings. There are many possible reasons why this might be. It has been suggested that drug companies may deliberately choose lower dosages for the comparison drug when they carry out head-to-head trials. Others have suggested that trials which produce unfavourable results are not published, or that unfavourable outcomes are suppressed. Whatever the reasons, the conclusions of this article are important, and suggest that the evidence base relating to statins may be substantially biased. There may also be implications for research involving other types of drug.
Citation: Bero L, Oostvogel F, Bacchetti P, Lee K (2007) Factors associated with findings of published trials of drug–drug comparisons: Why some statins appear more efficacious than others. PLoS Med 4(6): e184.
IN YOUR ARTICLE, PLEASE LINK TO THIS URL, WHICH WILL PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE PUBLISHED PAPER: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/"request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040184
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-04-06-bero.pdf
Related images for press use: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-04-06-bero.jpg
Caption: Percent of Results Favoring Test Drug by Funding Source.
CONTACT:
Lisa Bero
University of California, San Francisco
Department of Clinical Pharmacy
3333 California Street, Suite 420
Box 0613
San Francisco, CA 94143
United States of America
+1 415.476.1067
+1 415.502.0792 (fax)
berol@pharmacy.ucsf.edu
Vascular endothelial growth factor mediates intracrine survival in human breast carcinoma cells through internally expressed VEGFR 1/FLT1
A study by Shalom Avraham and colleagues from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at the Harvard Institute of Medicine provides evidence of a survival system in breast cancer cells by which vascular endothelial growth factor, VEGF, acts as an internal autocrine survival factor through binding to its receptor, VEGFR1.
Citation: Lee TH, Seng S, Sekine M, Hinton C, Fu Y, et al. (2007) Vascular endothelial growth factor mediates intracrine survival in human breast carcinoma cells through internally expressed VEGFR1/FLT1. PLoS Med 4(6): e186.
IN YOUR ARTICLE, PLEASE LINK TO THIS URL, WHICH WILL PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE PUBLISHED PAPER: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/"request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040186
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-04-06-avraham.pdf
Related image for press use: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-04-06-avraham.jpg
Caption: Nuclear envelope expression of VEGF Receptor 1 (VEGFR-1) mediates survival in breast cancer cells. The confocal image represents the co-localization of VEGFR-1 and the nuclear envelope marker Lamin A/C in MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells
CONTACT:
Holger J. Schünemann
Italian National Cancer Institute Regina Elena
Department of Epidemiology
Via Elio Chianesi 53
Rome, RM 00144
Italy
+39 3460846102
hjs@buffalo.edu
FROM THE PLoS MEDICINE MAGAZINE SECTION:
Donors and international health agencies are failing Africa on malaria control
Lack of coordination between donors and international health agencies is leading to the needless deaths of too many African children from malaria, says a team of health researchers from Burkina Faso and the University of Heidelberg.
Bocar Kouyaté (Centre National de Recherche et de la Formation au Paludisme, Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso) and colleagues show how this lack of coordination is preventing health professionals in Burkina Faso from getting life-saving treatments to children with malaria.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that the best treatment for malaria in sub-Saharan Africa is artemisinin-based combination therapy or “ACT” (a combination of drugs, one of which is from the artemisinin group of malaria drugs). The standard treatment, choloroquine, is much cheaper but it is practically useless in this part of the world because the malaria parasite has become resistant to it.
As a developing country, Burkina Faso cannot afford to purchase ACT, so it must rely on support from the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. However, Kouyaté and colleagues explain that the Global Fund, which has faced financial difficulties, turned down Burkina Faso’s request for financial assistance to purchase ACT. “There is the clear impression in Burkina Faso that this decision was mainly motivated by financial problems of the Global Fund,” say the authors.
Given that the Global Fund denied this assistance, as an interim measure Burkina Faso’s national malaria control program asked the World Bank to finance an alternative treatment to chloroquine: a combination of pyrimethamine/sulfadoxine and amodiaquine, which is cheaper than ACT.
But the World Bank refused. “This request was rejected,” say Kouyaté and colleagues, “with the argument that WHO is recommending only ACT. As a result, chloroquine remains factually the malaria first-line treatment in Burkina Faso.”
The authors call for “more realistic” malaria control policies and their rapid and comprehensive implementation in Sub-Saharan Africa.
“Too many African children are dying these days from a disease against which effective and cost-effective prevention and treatment options have long been developed.”
Citation: Kouyaté B, Sie A, Yé M, De Allegri M, Müller O (2007) The great failure of malaria control in Africa: A district perspective from Burkina Faso. PLoS Med 4(6): e127.
IN YOUR ARTICLE, PLEASE LINK TO THIS URL, WHICH WILL PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE PUBLISHED PAPER: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/"request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040127
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-04-06-muller.pdf
Related images for press use: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-04-06-muller-1.jpg
Caption: Lab Technicians Reading Slides from a Malaria Drug Trial at the Nouna Health Research Centre (Photo: Olaf Müller)
http://www.plos.org/press/plme-04-06-muller-2.jpg
Caption: Location of the Four Malaria Research Centres in Burkina Faso
CONTACT:
Olaf Müller
Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg
Department of Tropical Hygiene and Public Health
INF 324
Heidelberg, Baden-Würtemberg 69120
Germany
+49 6221 56 5035
+49 6221 56 5039 (fax)
olaf.mueller@urz.uni-heidelberg.de
Teaching global health at the frontlines
A medical student and a research professor at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Lima, Peru, describe an innovative program for teaching global health to Peruvian medical students.
Citation: Villafuerte-Galvez J, Curioso WH (2007) Teaching global health at the frontlines. PLoS Med 4(6): e130.
IN YOUR ARTICLE, PLEASE LINK TO THIS URL, WHICH WILL PROVIDE ACCESS TO THE PUBLISHED PAPER: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/"request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040130
PRESS-ONLY PREVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: http://www.plos.org/press/plme-04-06-curioso.pdf
Related images for press use:
http://www.plos.org/press/plme-04-06-curioso.jpg
Caption: Haberos: Snack Sellers in Ticlio(Photo: Javier Villafuerte-Galvez)
CONTACT:
Walter Curioso
Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia
School of Medicine and Public Health
Lima, Lima 31
Peru
+51 99633079
wcurioso@u.washington.edu
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