Wyeth paid for articles promoting its hormone replacement therapy drugs

Pharmaceutical giant Wyeth paid medical writing companies to prepare 26 review articles that promoted the benefits of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with its drugs Premarin and Prempro and minimized the risks, the New York Times reported today. The ghostwriting was revealed in court documents obtained by the Times and the journal PLoS Medicine. The documents are part of the paperwork for about 8,400 lawsuits filed against Wyeth by women who say they were damaged by the drugs, which have been linked to an increased risk of heart disease, among other problems.

The articles were primarily summaries of information gleaned from scholarly papers describing clinical research and were typically signed by prestigious physicians who had little to do with their preparation, the Times reported. Some researchers believe that the articles helped boost sales of the Wyeth drugs to their peak of nearly $2 billion in 2001, the year before studies linking the hormones to heart disease came out. A spokesman for the company insisted that the articles are scientifically accurate. But in 2006, he said, the company embraced a policy requiring the source of such articles to be acknowledged in the published text.

The news followed earlier reports that some pharmaceutical companies had paid publishers to produce specialized journals narrowly focused on disciplines where their drugs play a major role in treatment. Other pharmaceutical companies have also been linked to ghostwriting of review articles that promote drugs.

-- Thomas H. Maugh II

Testosterone is your friend

Men with low levels of testosterone appear to have a shorter lifespan than men with normal levels, according to investigators at Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald, in Germany. This adds to a growing body of research in this area.

In a study of 2,000 men ages 20 to 79, lead author Robin Haring and co-workers found that men with low testosterone were 2.5 times more likely to die over a 10-year period than those with higher testosterone.

At the beginning of the study, 5% of the men had low testosterone levels. These men tended to be more obese and were more likely to be diabetic or to have high blood pressure than the rest of the group. The researchers controlled for age, smoking, alcohol intake, level of physical activity and waist size.

"It’s very possible that lifestyle determines levels of testosterone," said Haring in a news release.

The results were presented at the Endocrine Society’s 90th annual meeting, held in San Francisco from June 15 to 18.

--Janet Cromley