Evaluation of Financial Conflicts of Interest Among Physician‐Authors of American College of Rheumatology Clinical Practice Guidelines

Clinical research affecting how doctors practice medicine is increasingly sponsored by companies that make drugs and medical devices. Previous systematic reviews have found that pharmaceutical-industry sponsored studies are more often favorable to the sponsor's product compared with studies with other sources of sponsorship. A similar association between sponsorship and outcomes have been found for device studies, but the body of evidence is not as strong as for sponsorship of drug studies. This review is an update of a previous Cochrane review and includes empirical studies on the association between sponsorship and research outcome.

The association between industry payments to physicians and prescribing rates of the brand-name medications that are being promoted is controversial. In the United States, industry payment data and Medicare prescribing records recently became publicly available.