• A G Dunn, F T Bourgeois, S Murthy, K D Mandl, R O Day, and E Coiera.
• Centre for Health Informatics, Australian Institute of Health Innovation, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. a.dunn@unsw.edu.au
• Clin. Pharmacol. Ther. 2012 Apr 1;91(4):685-91.

AbstractAlthough it is well established that funding source influences the publication of clinical trials, relatively little is known about how funding influences trial design. We examined a public trial registry to determine how funding source shapes trial design among trials involving antihyperlipidemics. We used an automated process to identify and analyze 809 trials from a set of 72,564. Three networks representing industry-, collaboratively, and non-industry-funded trials were constructed. Each network comprised 18 drugs as nodes connected according to the number of comparisons made between them. The results indicated that industry-funded trials were more likely to compare across drugs and examine dyslipidemia as a condition, and less likely to register safety outcomes. The source of funding for clinical trials had a measurable effect on trial design, which helps quantify differences in research agendas. Improved monitoring of current clinical trials may be used to more closely align research agendas to clinical needs.

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