Underreporting of conflicts of interest still occurs in the field of gastroenterology when it comes to clinical practice guidelines, with as much as 19% of European and U.S. guidelines providing inaccurate COI statements or none at all, according to new research presented at the 2023 annual meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology.
Researchers, led by Laith Numan, MD, MS, a gastroenterology fellow at Saint Louis University, reviewed the websites of nine GI societies in the United States and Europe for all published guidelines that used the GRADE (Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations) methodology from 2013 to Oct. 1, 2022 (abstract P1237). They categorized the guidelines authors’ COIs into three groups: “research related payments,” “direct payments” or “mixed.”
Of the 197 guidelines reviewed, 19%, or 38 guidelines, did not report COIs or provided what the researchers described as a “vague general statement” regarding COIs. Within the 159 remaining guidelines, authors reported a total of 2,216 COIs, with 65% of these coming from U.S. guidelines.
Across the reviewed guidelines, 29% of the 2,346 authors reported at least one COI. Most of the COIs were direct payments to the author (55%) or mixed direct payments and research funding (41%). Only 4% of these COIs were categorized as research funding without direct payments.
Although the majority of guidelines reported COIs, Dr. Numan and his co-investigators wrote that the remaining 19% is still an issue for the field. Transparency in both reporting COIs and decision making is critical, they wrote.
“Underreporting of COIs remains an issue. … Therefore, we encourage a more rigorous COI management process for authors involved in producing GI guidelines and stress the importance of publishing evidence profiles to have increased transparency.”
—Joe Morreale
This article is from the December 2023 print issue.