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Conflicts of interest

General:

Modern medicine would be inconceivable without research by the pharmaceutical industry. In this form of research, there is an essential interface between companies that develop active pharmaceutical agents or therapies and initiate scientific studies, and practicing physicians who accompany these studies, consider the results, but also evaluate them and summarize them in guidelines. This can lead to a dependency that is sometimes problematic and is also increasingly perceived by the public. This topic repeatedly finds its way into the general press and is discussed controversially. In a statement of the EU funded Horizon project, such conflicts of interest are defined as "a situation in which an individual has "interests in the outcome of the research that may lead to a personal advantage." [1]. In other words, that physicians may be influenced by participation in such studies and thereby recommend treatments to patients that are not up-to-date or even offer procedures that are not effective. Complete avoidance of such conflicts of interest is challenging and not always possible, and at times may not be socially desirable, for example, if it would slow down the development of novel therapies. Accordingly, the effort to increase professionalization, especially in university medicine, reveals the tension between the desire to advise patients, to be able to offer modern - also experimental - therapies, to act according to the current best state of knowledge and to always reflect the existing conflicts of interest. One recommendation that scientists and physicians are increasingly adopting is the disclosure of the benefits they receive and have received. This is required by default in scientific publications of high-ranking journals, but is also found almost without exception in presentations at major conferences. We would therefore like to outline here, and in line with our belief in "open science" as a goal of our working group, the existing conflicts of interest of our members.

Sources:

[1] https://h2020integrity.eu/conflict-of-interest-in-research-what-is-it-and-why-it-matters/ 

Conflicts of interest:

David Pedrosa has received honoraria as a speaker at symposia sponsored by Boston Scientific Corp, Medtronic, AbbVie Inc, Zambon and Esteve Pharmaceuticals GmbH. He has received payments as a consultant for Boston Scientific Corp and Bayer, and he received a scientific grant from Boston Scientific Corp for a project entitled: "Sensor-based optimization of Deep Brain Stimulation settings in Parkinson's disease," COMPARE-DBS. Finally, David Pedrosa was reimbursed by Esteve Pharmaceuticals and Boston Scientific Corp for travel expenses to attend congresses.

Urs Kleinholdermann took part in a training course on deep brain stimulation programming sponsored by Boston Scientific Corp.