Does diagnosing fatty liver and chronic kidney disease do more good than harm?

In a linked Perspective, Druin Burch examines the usefulness of screening for risk factors of cardiovascular disease. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summar

What could computerized brain training learn from evidence-based medicine?

In a Perspective linked to the study by Michael Valenzuela and colleagues, Druin Burch considers the context, content, and limitations of what we know about computerized cognitive enhancement. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary

Characterisation of trials where marketing purposes have been influential in study design: a descriptive study

Background - Analysis of trial documentation has revealed that some industry-funded trials may be done more for marketing purposes than scientific endeavour. We aimed to define characteristics of drug trials that appear to be influenced by marketing considerations and estimate their prevalence. Methods - We examined reports of randomised controlled trials of drugs published in six general medical journals in 2011. Six investigators independently reviewed all publications, characterising them as YES/MAYBE/NO suspected marketing trials, and then met to reach consensus. Blinded researchers then extracted key trial characteristics. We used blinded cluster analysis to determine if key variables could characterise the categories of trials (YES/MAYBE/NO). Results - 41/194 (21 %) trials were categorised as YES, 14 (7 %) as MAYBE, 139 (72 %) as NO. All YES and MAYBE trials were funded by the manufacturer, compared with 37 % of NO trials (p Conclusions - We reached consensus that a fifth of drug trials published in the highest impact general medical journals in 2011 had features that were suggestive of being designed for marketing purposes. Each of the marketing trials appeared to have a unique combination of features reported in the journal publications

Additional file 4: of Characterisation of trials where marketing purposes have been influential in study design: a descriptive study

References for the trials included in the analysis. (DOCX 37 kb

Additional file 5: of Characterisation of trials where marketing purposes have been influential in study design: a descriptive study

Characteristics of trials by group. (DOCX 35 kb