Handling conflicts of interest in infectious diseases

It has been more than 30 years since conflicts of interest (COI) has been recognized as a major problem affecting patient care and research. In this commentary, we address the problem of tangible COIs, while being well aware of the more subtle problems of “intangible COIs”. The first studies, primarily focusing on industry-sponsored trials and gifts from drug companies to individual physicians and hospitals during procurement processes, appeared already in the 1980ies. However, it was not until 1993 that a structured definition of COI was provided by Dennis Thompson on the New England Journal of Medicine.