A reviewer of last year's meta-analysis of GlaxoSmithKline's diabetes drug, Avandia, leaked the study to the company prior to its publication in the New England Journal of Medicine, according to a story appearing today (Jan. 30) in Nature.

Last year, Avandia, joined the ranks of blockbuster drugs associated with serious health risks: The meta-analysis published in NEJM showed that the Avandia increased the risk of heart attacks in patients who took it.

It turns out that Steven Haffner, a diabetes researcher at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, faxed a copy of the manuscript to GSK more than two weeks prior to its publication in NEJM.

Haffner admitted to Nature that he leaked the study, but failed to divulge a motive for his actions. "Why I sent it is a mystery," Haffner told the journal. "I don't really understand it. I wasn't feeling well. It was bad judgement."

Haffner did tell Nature, however, that he has served on a GSK steering committee for a clinical trial of Avandia, that he knew the GSK employee, Alexander Corbit, from working with the company previously, and that he had previously been paid to give talks for GSK.

No word yet on whether or not NEJM will ban Haffner from reviewing their manuscripts as they did last year to a reviewer who leaked the results of a cardiology study only two days before its publication. A statement Emailed to The Scientist from the medical journal said only that NEJM considers the peer-review process to be confidential. "Any breach of ethics by a reviewer would be taken very seriously by the editors, but would be handled as a private matter," the statement read.