Healthy Skepticism Library item: 9977

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: Journal Article

Lohiya S, Lohiya S.
The Suboptimal Legibility of Prescribing Information in Pharmaceutical Advertisements
The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine 2007 May-Jun; 20:(3):314-315
http://www.jabfm.org/cgi/content/full/20/3/314?etoc

Abstract:

To the Editor: The FDA requires that all pharmaceutical advertisements contain “information (on the drug’s) side effects, warnings, precautions, contraindications … and effectiveness.“1 Unfortunately, such “prescribing information (PI)” is often in fine print and hard to read, just like the expiration dates on medicines.2 Yet, PubMed is silent on this topic.

Methods
We analyzed the PI legibility in the first 4 medical journals received in a clinic in June 2006: the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Journal of the National Medical Association, Cutis, and Patient Care. In each, we reviewed one editorial (containing a scientific article) and all PI pages for font size, line spacing, boldfacing, and paragraphing (good: paragraphs for titles and subtitles; limited: titles only; absent: none)…

Notes:

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