Author Interviews, Cost of Health Care, JAMA, Pharmaceutical Companies, Yale / 22.01.2023
Yale Study Finds Pharmaceutical Companies Focus Advertising On Expensive Brand-Name Drugs
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
[caption id="attachment_59948" align="alignleft" width="150"] Neeraj Patel[/caption]
Neeraj Patel
Medical Student (MS-2), Yale School of Medicine
New Haven, CT
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising has been increasing in popularity for the past two decades or so, particularly via television. But it’s highly controversial. Only two high-income countries (the U.S. and New Zealand) widely permit this type of advertising for prescription drugs. Critics have pointed to a growing body of literature that suggests that direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs can be misleading, lead to inappropriate prescribing, and inflate healthcare costs. Proponents have argued that it improves public health by promoting clinically beneficial prescribing.
Neeraj Patel[/caption]
Neeraj Patel
Medical Student (MS-2), Yale School of Medicine
New Haven, CT
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising has been increasing in popularity for the past two decades or so, particularly via television. But it’s highly controversial. Only two high-income countries (the U.S. and New Zealand) widely permit this type of advertising for prescription drugs. Critics have pointed to a growing body of literature that suggests that direct-to-consumer advertising for prescription drugs can be misleading, lead to inappropriate prescribing, and inflate healthcare costs. Proponents have argued that it improves public health by promoting clinically beneficial prescribing.
Dr. Reker[/caption]
Daniel Reker, PhD
Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study?
Response: We started thinking more about this topic following a clinical experience five years ago that Dr. Traverso was involved in where a patient suffering form Celiac disease received a prescription of a drug which potentially had gluten. This experience really opened our eyes for how little we knew about the inactive ingredients and how clinical workflows do not currently accommodate for such scenarios.
We therefore set up a large scale analysis to better understand the complexity of the inactive ingredient portion in a medication as well as how frequently critical ingredients are included that could potential affect sensitive patients.