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Drug Industry Marketing Direct to Consumers and Doctors may
lead to Prescription Overuse
Newswise — Prescription drugs
are heavily promoted to health care
providers worldwide. But in only two
countries, the U.S. and New Zealand,
prescription drugs are also strongly
promoted directly to consumers.
Because these direct to
consumer ads typically use emotional appeals
to urge consumers to consider medical causes
for their symptoms, they may increase
physician visits and, in turn, physician
diagnoses and prescriptions. Not
surprisingly, these advertisements are
controversial.
A new study from the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
School of Medicine shows that direct to
consumer advertising was initially linked to
more physician visits and that physician
promotion was linked to more prescriptions.
According to lead author
Spencer D. Dorn, MD, MPH, fellow in
gastroenterology & hepatology, direct to
consumer advertisements may increase patient
awareness and empower them to discuss their
health concerns with their physician, and
professional promotion may increase
physician recognition of constipation and
IBS.
“But promotion to physicians
may result in overprescribing and overuse of
even mildly effective drugs such as
tegaserod before adequate information on
their health risk is available,” Dorn said.
The study involved the drug
tegaserod, brand name Zelnorm, a drug for
chronic constipation and irritable bowel
syndrome that was intensely marketed to
physicians as well as the public from 2002
to 2007 ($122 million in direct to consumer
ads and $127 million in physician promotion
in 2005 alone).
The researchers sought to
determine the relationship between this
promotional campaign and the number of
office visits for abdominal pain,
constipation, and bloating, irritable bowel
syndrome (IBS) diagnoses, and tegaserod
prescriptions.
“We found that in the three
months immediately following the start of
the tegaserod advertising campaign there
were 1 million more physician visits for
constipation and IBS like symptoms and
400,000 more IBS diagnoses.
"However,
over time this trend reversed and eventually
the number of visits and diagnoses returned
to baseline,” Dorn said.
“We also found that while
over time there was no effect of direct to
consumer advertisement on tegaserod
prescriptions, for every $243 spent
promoting tegaserod to physicians one
additional prescription was written.”
Along with Dorn, UNC
co-authors from the School of Pharmacy
include Joel F. Farley, PhD, Richard A.
Hansen, PhD, and Nilay D. Shah, PhD. Senior
author, Robert S. Sandler, MD, MPH, is
division head of gastroenterology &
hepatology and professor of medicine.
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