The Lacuna Project

lacuna (n.) a gap in a record where something should be

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Exhibit 089

Selective publication of antidepressant trials and its influence on apparent efficacy

Exhibit 089 ยท Record comparison and meta-analysis

Selective publication of antidepressant trials and its influence on apparent efficacy

According to the published literature, it appeared that 94% of the trials conducted were positive. By contrast, the FDA analysis showed that 51% were positive.

Compared FDA reviews of 74 trials of 12 antidepressants (12,564 participants) with the published literature. FDA judged 38 trials positive; 37 were published as positive and one was unpublished. Of 36 trials FDA judged negative or questionable, 22 were unpublished, 11 were published as positive and 3 were published conveying a negative result. Published trials appeared positive in 48 of 51 cases (94%), against 38 of 74 (51%) in FDA review. The 23 unpublished trials enrolled 3,449 participants. Published data inflated the pooled effect size by 32%. The authors could not determine whether sponsors, authors or journals caused the missing publications.

Source
Turner et al., New England Journal of Medicine
Date
2008
Quoted from
Abstract (PubMed PMID 18199864), Results
Grade
Peer-reviewed
Document
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18199864/
Accessed
2026-11-09
Cited by
Findings citing this exhibit
Note
PubMed record: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18199864/.

Cited by

Finding MED-4.1
Peer-reviewed The FDA judged 38 of 74 antidepressant trials (51 percent) positive. In the published literature, 48 of 51 trials (94 percent) appeared positive.