Results of medication studies in top medical journals may be misleading to readers

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http://www.uclahealth.org/body.cfm?id=561&action=detail&ref=1719

Results of medication studies in top medical journals may be misleading to readers

Date: 08/25/2011
Contact: Enrique Rivero

Studies about medications published in the most influential medical journals are frequently designed in a way that yields misleading or confusing results, new research suggests.

Investigators from the medical schools at UCLA and Harvard analyzed all the randomized medication trials published in the six highest-impact general medicine journals between June 1, 2008, and Sept. 30, 2010, to determine the prevalence of three types of outcome measures that make data interpretation difficult.

In addition, they reviewed each study's abstract to determine the percentage that reported results using relative rather than absolute numbers, which can also be a misleading.

The findings are published online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

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