Document Detail


Adherence of pharmaceutical advertisements in medical journals to FDA guidelines and content for safe prescribing.
MedLine Citation:
PMID:  21858076     Owner:  NLM     Status:  In-Data-Review    
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
BACKGROUND: Physician-directed pharmaceutical advertising is regulated in the United States by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA); adherence to current FDA guidelines is unknown. Our objective was to determine adherence rates of physician-directed print advertisements in biomedical journals to FDA guidelines and describe content important for safe prescribing.
METHODS AND FINDINGS: Cross-sectional analysis of November 2008 pharmaceutical advertisements within top U.S.-based biomedical journals publishing original research. We excluded advertisements for devices, over the counter medications, and disease awareness. We utilized FDA guideline items identifying unique forms of advertisement bias to categorize advertisements as adherent to FDA guidelines, possibly non-adherent to at least 1 item, or non-adherent to at least 1 item. We also evaluated advertisement content important for safe prescribing, including benefit quantification, risk information and verifiable references. All advertisements were evaluated by 2 or more investigators, with differences resolved by discussion. Twelve journals met inclusion criteria. Nine contained pharmaceutical advertisements, including 192 advertisements for 82 unique products; median 2 per product (range 1-14). Six "teaser" advertisements presented only drug names, leaving 83 full unique advertisements. Fifteen advertisements (18.1%) adhered to all FDA guidelines, 41 (49.4%) were non-adherent with at least one form of FDA-described bias, and 27 (32.5%) were possibly non-adherent due to incomplete information. Content important for safe prescribing was often incomplete; 57.8% of advertisements did not quantify serious risks, 48.2% lacked verifiable references and 28.9% failed to present adequate efficacy quantification. Study limitations included its focus on advertisements from a single month, the subjectivity of FDA guidelines themselves, and the necessary subjectivity of determinations of adherence.
CONCLUSIONS: Few physician-directed print pharmaceutical advertisements adhere to all FDA guidelines; over half fail to quantify serious risks. The FDA could better protect public health by creating new more objective advertisement guidelines requiring transparent presentation of basic safety and efficacy information.
Authors:
Deborah Korenstein; Salomeh Keyhani; Ali Mendelson; Joseph S Ross
Related Documents :
11338366 - In new york, the early bird gets the holiday "plum." news releases bear fruit for n.y. ...
21132536 - Sliding doors: should treatment of gender identity disorder and other body modification...
17003196 - The united states armed forces amputee patient care program.
19382736 - Lessons learned: mobile device encryption in the academic medical center.
18487836 - Exploratory analysis of medical coding practices: the relevance of reported data qualit...
5789816 - Regional utilization of the union catalog of medical periodicals system.
Publication Detail:
Type:  Journal Article     Date:  2011-08-17
Journal Detail:
Title:  PloS one     Volume:  6     ISSN:  1932-6203     ISO Abbreviation:  PLoS ONE     Publication Date:  2011  
Date Detail:
Created Date:  2011-08-22     Completed Date:  -     Revised Date:  -    
Medline Journal Info:
Nlm Unique ID:  101285081     Medline TA:  PLoS One     Country:  United States    
Other Details:
Languages:  eng     Pagination:  e23336     Citation Subset:  IM    
Affiliation:
Department of Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, New York, United States of America.
Export Citation:
APA/MLA Format     Download EndNote     Download BibTex
MeSH Terms
Descriptor/Qualifier:

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine


Previous Document:  Fix your eyes in the space you could reach: neurons in the macaque medial parietal cortex prefer gaz...
Next Document:  Confocal Fluorescence Anisotropy and FRAP Imaging of ?-Synuclein Amyloid Aggregates in Living Cells.