Thousands of cost-effectiveness analyses had a "significant sponsorship bias" regardless of disease treatment or study design since 1972, according to research published June 22 in The BMJ.
The study shows that industry-sponsored research was 33 percent more likely to find cost benefits of its drugs with threshold values between $50,000 and $150,000 compared to non-industry-sponsored research.
More than 70 percent of the 8,192 cost-effectiveness studies reported the studied drugs were more effective and costly. Among these 5,877 cost-effectiveness analyses, sponsorship bias was most heavy in drug interventions in model-based study designs.