An audit of safety reporting in randomized controlled trials over a five-year period in a high impact factor journal

BACKGROUND: Randomized controlled trials [RCTs] form the corner-stone of evidence-based medicine. RCTs published in high impact factor journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine [NEJM] are a key driver of clinical practice and policy decisions. RCTs are expected to report both efficacy and safety, however, safety reporting in many studies tends to be poor. The present audit was undertaken with the primary objective of evaluating safety reporting during a five-year period in all RCTs published in the NEJM. METHODS: PubMed alone was searched for RCTs published in NEJM from 2013-17. Each RCT was searched for the following outcome measures –whether the trial was sponsored by pharmaceutical industry or investigator initiated, phase of trial, nature of intervention and therapeutic area in terms of reporting of safety outcomes [with ‘P values’ or ‘95% confidence interval’]. RESULTS: A total of n=623 articles reported safety outcomes of which 275/623 (44.1%) articles reported statistics for safety outcome. There was significant difference in reporting of safety statistics between investigator initiated studies and pharmaceutical industry sponsored studies, [cOR=4.0, 95% CI 2.8- 5.5 P < 0.001]; phase 3 and phase 4 trials, [cOR 0.67, 95% CI 0.5 - 0.9, P = 0.02]; trials involving drugs and surgery, [cOR 2.07, 95% CI 1.2-3.5, P = 0.01] and in therapeutic areas, cardiovascular and oncology [cOR 0.26, 95% CI 0.1-0.4, P < 0.0001]. CONCLUSIONS: Safety reporting in RCTs continues to take a back seat relative to efficacy reporting and is worse for pharmaceutical industry funded studies. Safety reporting should be emphasized in the CONSORT guidelines.