IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0162198.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Relationship between Research Outcomes and Risk of Bias, Study Sponsorship, and Author Financial Conflicts of Interest in Reviews of the Effects of Artificially Sweetened Beverages on Weight Outcomes: A Systematic Review of Reviews

Author

Listed:
  • Daniele Mandrioli
  • Cristin E Kearns
  • Lisa A Bero

Abstract

Background: Artificially sweetened beverage consumption has steadily increased in the last 40 years. Several reviews examining the effects of artificially sweetened beverages on weight outcomes have discrepancies in their results and conclusions. Objectives: To determine whether risk of bias, results, and conclusions of reviews of effects of artificially sweetened beverage consumption on weight outcomes differ depending on review sponsorship and authors’ financial conflicts of interest. Methods: We performed a systematic review of reviews of the effects of artificially sweetened beverages on weight. Two assessors independently screened articles for inclusion, extracted data, and assessed risks of bias. We compared risk of bias, results and conclusions of reviews by different industry sponsors, authors’ financial conflict of interest and journal sponsor. We also report the concordance between review results and conclusions. Results: Artificial sweetener industry sponsored reviews were more likely to have favorable results (3/4) than non-industry sponsored reviews (1/23), RR: 17.25 (95% CI: 2.34 to 127.29), as well as favorable conclusions (4/4 vs. 15/23), RR: 1.52 (95% CI: 1.14 to 2.06). All reviews funded by competitor industries reported unfavorable conclusions (4/4). In 42% of the reviews (13/31), authors’ financial conflicts of interest were not disclosed. Reviews performed by authors that had a financial conflict of interest with the food industry (disclosed in the article or not) were more likely to have favorable conclusions (18/22) than reviews performed by authors without conflicts of interest (4/9), RR: 7.36 (95% CI: 1.15 to 47.22). Risk of bias was similar and high in most of the reviews. Conclusions: Review sponsorship and authors’ financial conflicts of interest introduced bias affecting the outcomes of reviews of artificially sweetened beverage effects on weight that could not be explained by other sources of bias.

Suggested Citation

  • Daniele Mandrioli & Cristin E Kearns & Lisa A Bero, 2016. "Relationship between Research Outcomes and Risk of Bias, Study Sponsorship, and Author Financial Conflicts of Interest in Reviews of the Effects of Artificially Sweetened Beverages on Weight Outcomes:," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 11(9), pages 1-20, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0162198
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0162198
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0162198
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0162198&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0162198?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Golder, Su & McCambridge, Jim, 2021. "Alcohol, cardiovascular disease and industry funding: A co-authorship network analysis of systematic reviews," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 289(C).
    2. Zhai, Tianchang & Li, Lei & Wang, Jingjing & Si, Wei, 2022. "Will the consumption tax on sugar-sweetened beverages help promote healthy beverage consumption? Evidence from urban China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    3. Young Jun Choi & Mi Sun Jeon, 2020. "How Business Interests and Government Inaction Led to the Humidifier Disinfectant Disaster in South Korea: Implications for Better Risk Governance," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 40(2), pages 240-253, February.
    4. Damien Wyssa & Martin R Tramèr & Nadia Elia, 2019. "Reporting of conflicts of interest and of sponsorship of guidelines in anaesthesiology. A cross-sectional study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(2), pages 1-13, February.
    5. Béné, Christophe, 2022. "Why the Great Food Transformation may not happen – A deep-dive into our food systems’ political economy, controversies and politics of evidence," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    6. Alexander Ivanov & Beata A Kaczkowska & Saadat A Khan & Jean Ho & Morteza Tavakol & Ashok Prasad & Geetha Bhumireddy & Allan F Beall & Igor Klem & Parag Mehta & William M Briggs & Terrence J Sacchi & , 2017. "Review and Analysis of Publication Trends over Three Decades in Three High Impact Medicine Journals," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(1), pages 1-11, January.
    7. Marie A. Bragg & Brian Elbel & Marion Nestle, 2020. "Food Industry Donations to Academic Programs: A Cross-Sectional Examination of the Extent of Publicly Available Data," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(5), pages 1-15, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0162198. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.