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Research

Zanamivir for influenza in adults and children: systematic review of clinical study reports and summary of regulatory comments

BMJ 2014; 348 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.g2547 (Published 09 April 2014) Cite this as: BMJ 2014;348:g2547

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Re: Zanamivir for influenza in adults and children: systematic review of clinical study reports and summary of regulatory comments

With the publication of our systematic reviews on oseltamivir and zanamivir for influenza in adults and children, [1,2] we are making all 107 full clinical study reports publicly available.

Despite the worldwide stockpiling of antivirals, these reports have never been reviewed by the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its European counterpart, the ECDC.

It took us four years to obtain the full set of reports. The story relating to the acquisition has been documented at the BMJ's open data campaign (http://www.bmj.com/tamiflu).

If you disagree with our findings, or if you want to carry out your own analysis or just want to see what around 150,000 pages of data look like, they are one click away (http://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.77471).

Carl Heneghan, Tom Jefferson, Peter Doshi

[1] Tom Jefferson, Mark Jones, Peter Dosh, Elizabeth A Spencer, Igho Onakpoya, Carl J Heneghan. Oseltamivir for influenza in adults and children: systematic review of clinical study reports and summary of regulatory comments
BMJ 2014;348:g2545

[2] Carl J Heneghan, Igho Onakpoya, Matthew Thompson, Elizabeth A Spencer, Mark Jones, Tom Jefferson. Zanamivir for influenza in adults and children: systematic review of clinical study reports and summary of regulatory comments
BMJ 2014;348:g2547

Competing interests: We are the authors of the systematic reviews and have declared our conflicts of interest in the manuscript.

16 April 2014
Carl J Heneghan
Professor
Tom Jefferson, Peter Doshi
University of Oxford
Nuffield Dept of Primary Care Health Sciences, New Radcliffe House, Oxford
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