What about the Side Effects?

A recent JAMA study suggests that researchers often omit safety information associated with drug research articles. That according to a recent Yahoo News article. The article suggests that among seven major categories of drug studies, researchers were unable to find a single example in where reporting of safety issues could be deemed “satisfactory.”

The researchers looked at 192 drug studies each of which involved a minimum of 100 patients, according to the article. While the study found that 75 percent of the drug reports included the number of patients withdrawn from the study due to a drug’s toxicity, the specific reasons for the withdrawals were mentioned in less than half of the cases.

The research authors stated that well-done drug trials will result in “enormous amounts of safety and adverse effects data” yet that data is selectively filtered and limited to a small space in the overall report.

Yahoo News: Drug Trial Reports Omit Safety Information–Study