Who will fund hypothesis testing studies?

doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7542.666-c

BMJ 2006;332:666-667 (18 March), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7542.666-c

Letter

Who will fund hypothesis testing studies?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—Although Loke et al concluded that case reportsin pharmacovigilance have limited value,¹ case reports or seriesare valuable as hypothesis generating papers, which benefitclinicians and patients. The number of follow-up studies isonly one outcome by which to judge the value of case reportsor series, but other outcomes may be more difficult to study.

Although case reports are valuable in pharmacovigilance, hypothesistesting studies are necessary and I agree with Vandenbrouckethat a more consistent scheme is needed.² An important questionis, where will funding for such studies come from? Pharmaceuticalcompanies may have little incentive to further investigate adversereactions and if funding is provided there may be conflictinginterests. For different reasons, governments may also be reluctantto fund pharmacoepidemiology studies.³

In New Zealand, the government funded intensive medicines monitoringprogramme (IMMP) performs hypothesis-testing studies which furtherinvestigate adverse drug reactions, including calculating . . . [Full text of this article]

Mira Harrison-Woolrych, director

Intensive Medicines Monitoring Programme, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand Mira.harrison-woolrych@stonebow.otago.ac.nz

CiteULike

Complore

Connotea

Del.icio.us Add to Digg

Digg

StumbleUpon Add to Technorati

Technorati What's this?

Relevant Articles

Case reports of suspected adverse drug reactions: Case reports were dismissed too quickly: Jan P Vandenbroucke
BMJ 2006 332: 488. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Case reports of suspected adverse drug reactions—systematic literature survey of follow-up: Yoon Kong Loke, Deirdre Price, Sheena Derry, and Jeffrey K Aronson
BMJ 2006 332: 335-339. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]