Product promotion masquerading as research

One of the things about alternative medicine that I find most regrettable is the fact that researchers in this area abuse science for their very own promotional aims. This phenomenon is so very common, in my view, that many of the individuals involved in it are no longer aware of it. Science, they seem to think, is a tool for marketing products or for popularising the idea that alternative medicine is the best thing since sliced bread.

To support this bold statement, I could show you virtually hundreds of articles. But this might bore your socks off, and instead I will focus on just one paper which has just been published and makes my point in an exemplary fashion.

The new clinical investigation was performed to confirm the benefit of complementary medicine in patients with breast cancer undergoing adjuvant hormone therapy (HT). A total of 1561 patients were treated according to international guidelines. They suffered from arthralgia and mucosal dryness induced by the adjuvant HT. In order to reduce the side-effects, the patients were complementarily treated with a combination of sodium selenite, proteolytic plant enzymes (bromelaine and papain) and Lens culinaris lectin. Outcomes were documented before and four weeks after complementary treatment. Validation was carried-out by scoring from 1 (no side-effects/optimal tolerability) to 6 (extreme side-effects/extremely poor tolerability). A total of 1,165 patients suffering from severe side-effects (symptom scores >3) were enrolled in this investigation.

Overall, 62.6% of patients (729 out of 1,165) suffering from severe arthralgia and 71.7% of patients (520 out of 725) with severe mucosal dryness significantly benefited from the oral combination product. Mean scores of symptoms declined from 4.83 before treatment to 3.23 after four weeks of treatment for arthralgia and from 4.72 before treatment to 2.99 after four weeks of treatment for mucosal dryness, the primary aims of the present investigation. The reduction of side-effects of HT was statistically significant after four weeks.

The authors concluded that this investigation confirms studies suggesting a benefit of complementary treatment with the combination of sodium selenite, proteolytic enzymes and L. culinaris lectin in patients with breast cancer.

Where should I start?

• This ‘investigation’ was nothing other than a survey.
• There was no control group, and we therefore cannot tell whether the patients would not have done just a well or even better without taking this supplement.
• No objective outcome measure was included.
• What happened to the ~400 patients who were not included in the analyses?
• Even the authors admit that their aim was “to confirm the benefit of complementary medicine…”, and it goes without saying that, with such an aim in mind, any scientific rigor is not welcome.