%0 Journal Article
%@ 0007-1250
%A Cristea, Ioana A.
%A Gentili, Claudio
%A Pietrini, Pietro
%A Cuijpers, Pim
%D 2016
%F eprints:3603
%I The Royal College of Psychiatrists
%J The British Journal of Psychiatry
%T (Review article) Sponsorship bias in the comparative efficacy of psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy for adult depression: meta-analysis
%U http://eprints.imtlucca.it/3603/
%X Background:Sponsorship bias has never been investigated for non-pharmacological treatments like psychotherapy.AimsWe examined industry funding and author financial conflict of interest (COI) in randomised controlled trials directly comparing psychotherapy and pharmacotherapy in depression.Method: We conducted a meta-analysis with subgroup comparisons for industry v. non-industry-funded trials, and respectively for trial reports with author financial COI v. those without.Results: In total, 45 studies were included. In most analyses, pharmacotherapy consistently showed significant effectiveness over psychotherapy, g = -0.11 (95% CI -0.21 to -0.02) in industry-funded trials. Differences between industry and non-industry-funded trials were significant, a result only partly confirmed in sensitivity analyses. We identified five instances where authors of the original article had not reported financial COI.ConclusionsIndustry-funded trials for depression appear to subtly favour pharmacotherapy over psychotherapy. Disclosure of all financial ties with the pharmaceutical industry should be encouraged.
%Z PMID: 27810891