Background: Systematic reviews summarize current literature in a way that allows physicians to translate new information smoothly to clinical practice. Conflict of interest (COI) is a form of bias that can affect the validity of study results. Objectives: The objective of our study was to determine the presence of conflicts of interest among systematic review authors and the favorability of reported results and conclusions for studies regarding breast cancer treatments. Methods: We used a comprehensive search strategy with Med-line and Embase to identify breast cancer treatment systematic reviews. Prior to the onset of the study, duplicate removal and title and abstract screening were completed. All sequential screening and data extraction were completed in masked, duplicate fashion. Both undisclosed and disclosed conflicts of interest were examined for each author of a systematic review. Results: Of the 21 systematic reviews included, 8 (38.1) had at least one author with a disclosed or undisclosed conflict of interest. None of the studies included were industry sponsored; however, 22 authors were found to have secondary interests. No association was found between systematic review outcomes and COIs. CONCLUSION: While no studies in our sample were industry funded, our investigation found 18.3 of authors to have a COI. More than one-third of the systematic reviews included were co-authored by one of these individuals— for which the COIs were largely undisclosed. This leads us to believe there is room for improvement in reporting practices.
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