Medical research aimed at animal testing of therapies for the treatment of brain diseases are often skewed and show positive results, which are confirmed in humans - this according to a poll released Tuesday. The results of the study conducted by John Ioannidis and colleagues at Stanford University, explains why a large number of seemingly effective treatments for animals are not effective in humans.
The authors have examined 160 publications 1411 developments involving more than 4000 test animals, associated with the treatment of Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease or multiple sclerosis. Only eight of the developments show noticeable results, but only two of them allow to achieve satisfactory results in the last administration when people try therapy, say researchers from Stanford. The rest of the studies were skewed by a number of problems such as no good conduct, very little amount of attempts or publishing only studies with "positive results."
Literature on studies of neurological diseases is probably very biased, according to a study published in the journal PLoS Biology. "Biased results from animal experiments may lead to ineffective or even harmful to human clinical trials or loss of money for research," the authors add. According to them, a possible explanation for this failure is in the biological and physiological differences between animals and humans, and these errors can be explained by abnormalities in research or publications for them.
Researchers prefer to publish their research in prestigious scientific journals, but they tend to emphasize only studies with positive results, which may also explain biased results.