Pharmaceutical giant Wyeth paid medical writing companies to prepare 26 review articles that promoted the benefits of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with its drugs Premarin and Prempro and minimized the risks, the New York Times reported today. The ghostwriting was revealed in court documents obtained by the Times and the journal PLoS Medicine. The documents are part of the paperwork for about 8,400 lawsuits filed against Wyeth by women who say they were damaged by the drugs, which have been linked to an increased risk of heart disease, among other problems.

The articles were primarily summaries of information gleaned from scholarly papers describing clinical research and were typically signed by prestigious physicians who had little to do with their preparation, the Times reported. Some researchers believe that the articles helped boost sales of the Wyeth drugs to their peak of nearly $2 billion in 2001, the year before studies linking the hormones to heart disease came out. A spokesman for the company insisted that the articles are scientifically accurate. But in 2006, he said, the company embraced a policy requiring the source of such articles to be acknowledged in the published text.

The news followed earlier reports that some pharmaceutical companies had paid publishers to produce specialized journals narrowly focused on disciplines where their drugs play a major role in treatment. Other pharmaceutical companies have also been linked to ghostwriting of review articles that promote drugs.

-- Thomas H. Maugh II