Wyeth/Pfizer accused of using ghostwritten articles to overstate benefits of HRT

The first academic analysis of the 1,500 documents unsealed in recent litigation against the pharmaceutical giant Wyeth (now part of Pfizer; NYSE: PFE) reveals unprecedented insights into how pharmaceutical companies use ghostwriters to insert marketing messages into articles published in medical journals, according to an article in the journal PLoS Medicine.

Adriane Fugh-Berman, associate professor in the Department of Physiology at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington DC, USA, analyzed dozens of ghostwritten reviews and commentaries published in medical journals and journal supplements that were used to promote unproven benefits and downplay harms of Prempro - a brand of menopausal hormone replacement therapy (HRT) - and to cast competing therapies in a negative light. These articles were widely circulated to drug reps and doctors to disseminate the company's marketing messages, it was stated.

Wyeth used a medical education and communication company DesignWrite to produce ghostwritten articles in order to mitigate the perceived risks of breast cancer associated with HRT, to defend the unsupported cardiovascular ''benefits'' of the therapy and to promote off-label, unproven uses of HRT such as the prevention of dementia, Parkinson's disease, vision problems, and wrinkles, writes Dr Fugh-Berman.