Kuriya Bindee, Schneid Elana C, Bell Chaim M
Department of Rheumatology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
PLoS One. 2008 Jul 30;3(7):e2828. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0002828.
Press releases are a popular vehicle to disseminate health information to the lay media. While the quality of press releases issued by scientific conferences and medical journals has been questioned, no efforts to assess pharmaceutical industry press releases have been made. Therefore, we sought to systematically examine pharmaceutical company press releases about original research for measures of quality.
METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Press releases issued by the ten top selling, international pharmaceutical companies in the year 2005 were selected for evaluation. A total of 1028 electronic press releases were issued and 235 were based on original research. More than half (59%) reported results presented at a scientific meeting. Twenty-one percent of releases were not explicit about the source of original data. While harms or adverse events were commonly cited (76%), study limitations were rarely noted (6%). Almost one-third (29%) of releases did not quantify study results. Studies presented in abstract form were subsequently published within at least 20 months in 53% of cases.
Pharmaceutical company press releases frequently report basic study details. However, readers should be cautioned by the preliminary nature of the data and lack of identified limitations. Methods to improve the reporting and interpretation of drug company press releases are desirable to prevent misleading media coverage.
新闻稿是向大众媒体传播健康信息的一种常用方式。虽然科学会议和医学期刊发布的新闻稿质量受到质疑，但尚未有人对制药行业的新闻稿进行评估。因此，我们试图系统地审查制药公司关于原创研究的新闻稿，以衡量其质量。
方法/主要发现：选取了2005年销售额排名前十的国际制药公司发布的新闻稿进行评估。共发布了1028篇电子新闻稿，其中235篇基于原创研究。超过一半（59%）的新闻稿报道了在科学会议上展示的结果。21%的新闻稿未明确原始数据的来源。虽然常见提及危害或不良事件（76%），但很少提及研究局限性（6%）。近三分之一（29%）的新闻稿未对研究结果进行量化。以摘要形式呈现的研究在53%的情况下至少在20个月内随后发表。
制药公司的新闻稿经常报道基础研究细节。然而，读者应注意数据的初步性质以及缺乏明确的局限性。需要改进制药公司新闻稿的报告和解读方法，以防止误导性的媒体报道。
