Researchers Review Studies Assessing SSBs and Weight Gain for Conflicts of Interest

After analyzing reporting biases for 17 systematic reviews (SRs) assessing the
association between sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs) and weight gain, EU
researchers have allegedly concluded that financial conflicts of interest may
influence the outcomes of such studies. Maira Bes-Rastrollo, et al., “Financial
Conflicts of Interest and Reporting Bias Regarding the Association between
Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Weight Gain: A Systematic Review of
Systematic Reviews,” PLoS Medicine, December 2013. Selected from PubMed,
Cochrane Library and Scopus databases, the SRs under scrutiny were classified
as either finding a positive association between SSB consumption and
weight gain or finding no association at all.

“Among those reviews without any reported conflict of interest, 83.3% of
the conclusions (10/12) were that SSB consumption could be a potential
risk factor for weight gain,” report the study’s authors. “In contrast, the same
percentage of conclusions, 83.3% (5/6), of those SRs disclosing some financial
conflict of interest with the food industry were that the scientific evidence
was insufficient to support a positive association between SSB consumption
and weight gain or obesity.” Although the authors acknowledged that their
review could not rule out the existence of publication bias among those
studies not declaring any conflict of interest, they nevertheless noted that
“those reviews with conflicts of interest were five times more likely to present
a conclusion of no positive association than those without them.”

Issue 509