Healthy Skepticism Library item: 7984

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

United Press International.
TV drug ads don't sway docs
Health Business 2007 Jan 26
http://www.upi.com/HealthBusiness/view.php?StoryID=20070126-025739-3758r

Full text:

CHARLESTON, S.C., Jan. 26 (UPI) — Direct-to-consumer drug advertising may make consumers more aware of new treatments but not necessarily drive higher U.S. drug sales.

According to researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina who focused on Cox-2 inhibitor painkillers, Pfizer’s Celebrex and Merck’s withdrawn drug Vioxx, DTC ads may have the biggest impact on patients, not their doctors.

“It’s not been established whether DTC has a larger effect on stimulating prescribing by physicians or on encouraging patients to go visit their physician’s more frequently,” said David Bradford, director of MUSC’s Center for Health Economic and Policy Studies and lead author of the study.

“We found that, for both Vioxx and Celebrex, DTC tended to increase visits by patients with osteoarthritis to their physicians,” Bradford said. “Once the patients got to the doctor’s office, advertising was not the biggest factor affecting prescribing. In fact, we tended to find (drug) class level effects.”

The new data represent initial findings from an ongoing project at MUSC that looks at DTC for the two Cox-2 inhibitor drugs, which will be published in the September/October issue of the journal Health Affairs.

Bradford said the early data suggest doctors and patients are making informed decisions about medical treatments.

“One conclusion we found is that DTC may not be the universally pernicious practice that people are worried it is,” he said.