Introduction:

Physicians' main responsibility is to practice medicine for the benefit of patients. However, there are situations where secondary interests affect this commitment and give rise to conflicts of interest.

Objective:

To analyze currently available systematic reviews and meta-analyses on conflicts of interest in medicine to summarize relevant evidence in this regard.

Material and methods:

A literature search was performed in the MEDLINE and LILACS databases using the following search strategy: systematic reviews and meta-analysis on conflicts of interests in medicine published in serialized scientific journals; no publication time or language limits were applied. Studies that met the inclusion criteria were grouped according to the medical activity they assessed, and information on the type and number of studies and conclusions of all publications included in the review was collected.

Results:

29 publications were included, and they were classified as follows: studies based on research articles, on clinical practice guidelines, on clinical practice, and on patient-oriented papers.

Conclusions:

It was found that the authors of the original research papers included in the meta analyses and systematic reviews analyzed here do not always state if they have conflicts of interest or not. Nevertheless, when said conflicts are reported, they tend to present results favoring the drugs or medical technologies of their sponsor.

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