New England Journal reviewer tipped drug firm, Nature reports

- Boston Globe

01/31/2008 -  A peer reviewer for the Waltham-based New England Journal of Medicine leaked a negative article about a diabetes drug to its manufacturer more that two weeks before the study appeared, another major scientific journal reports today.

Steven Haffner of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio faxed his copy of a report on Avandia to drug maker GlaxoSmithKline 17 days before the article was published online on May 21, according to the story in Nature, which does not cite its source.

The NEJM meta-analysis of other studies showed that people who took Avandia for at least 24 weeks had a 43 percent greater risk of having a heart attack. The US Food and Drug Administration sent out a safety alert based on the news and its manufacturer's stock price slid.

“Why I sent it is a mystery,” Haffner told Nature. “I don’t really understand it. I wasn’t feeling well. It was bad judgment."

The New England Journal told Nature it bans reviewers who break confidentiality agreements from reviewing and writing editorials and review articles but declined to answer Globe questions about the Haffner case.

"We consider the peer-review process to be confidential," a statement from the journal sent by spokeswoman Karen Pederson said. "Any breach of ethics by a reviewer would be taken very seriously by the editors, but would be handled as a private matter."

Nature's own embargo on the story was broken when US Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, made public a letter demanding answers from GlaxoSmithKline on the leak.