Healthy Skepticism Library item: 15317

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: news

Kollmorgen A.
More pressure on promotion
PharmainFocus 2009 Mar 16
http://www.pharmainfocus.com.au/

Full text:

An academic researcher has called for drug advertising to be more tightly controlled – and marketing data exposed – in the wake of research showing widely advertised drugs are prescribed more often.

In a recently published study in the online edition of the Internal Medicine Journal Dr Anges Vitry, Senior Research Fellow at the University of South Australia’‘s School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences, concludes: “The newest and most expensive medicines may be chosen over older effective drugs by prescribers. New policies on drug promotion control need to be developed.”

The study compared the number of ads for hypertension drugs in three medical journals from 1993 and 2002 with prescription rates over the same time frame. By a wide margin, drugs with more advertising were prescribed more often.

This is not a newsflash for drug companies, Dr Vitry says, but health professionals and the government should be paying better attention to how marketing affects their choices.

According to the study, “the Australian government could have reduced the amount of subsidised medicines expenditure by $45 million in 1998 if Australian doctors had followed the recommendation of first line therapy using thiazide diuretics or beta blockers for uncomplicated hypertension”.

Dr Vitry told Pharma in Focus that her investigation was prompted by the lack of transparency on the subject. She added it was limited by the same information gap that confronts health professionals and the government.

“We don’‘t have much valid data to back our judgements about the effects of advertising on prescription rates. The study was done in this framework. We need to know more in order to be sure that drugs aren’‘t being subsidised and prescribed just because of good marketing.”

In order to avoid wasted federal health dollars, pharma companies should share what they know, Dr Vitry says.

“We know they keep very careful track of their marketing results. This is information that doctors and the government should have as well. I don’‘t think the drug companies would voluntarily disclose it, but it would be to the long-term benefit of Australian health care if they did.”