As reported by Regulatory Focus, a new review of studies of direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertising identifies potential positives and negatives for DTC advertising on the patient-prescriber relationship and highlights gaps in the current medical literature on the topic. The review, authored by researchers at RTI International and the FDA, looked at 38 studies published between 1982 and 2017 that examined outcomes reported by patients, prescribers or both regarding their experience with DTC advertising in the US and New Zealand.
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“This research offers an important perspective on the broader goal of incorporating patient and prescriber voices in decision-making,” the authors wrote, noting that they identified outcomes on patient information seeking, medication adherence, requests for advertised drugs, prescribing behaviors and perceptions of interactions between patients and prescribers.
“Studies suggested some potential benefits of exposure to DTCA, including patients’ enhanced information-seeking, increased patient requests for appropriate prescriptions (when addressing potential underuse) and patients’ perceptions of higher-quality interactions with prescribers. Most prescribers perceived a neutral influence on the quality of their clinical interactions with patients regarding DTCA. Harms included patients receiving prescriptions for drugs that were not appropriate for them or that the patients did not need, and the potential for DTCA to interfere with medication adherence in some populations, such as those with mental illness. The potential benefits of DTCA on the patient–provider encounter must be balanced with the potential for harms.”
As Regulatory Focus noted in its story, the authors found that 22 of the studies reported information seeking behavior following exposure to DTC advertising. Some of these studies associated information seeking more strongly with patients with chronic conditions and those with a more positive view of DTC advertising.
But the authors also found that DCT advertising was rarely the only reason patients scheduled medical visits. One of the studies, published by FDA in 2004, reported that only 4% of patients saw their doctors exclusively related to getting more information about a drug they had seen an ad for. Two smaller studies that sampled 250 and 500 patients found that 11% of respondents had scheduled appointments or sought medical care due to DTC advertising. The authors say their review has highlighted gaps in the literature for DTC advertising, as many of the studies they looked at were more than a decade old and do not reflect current trends in DTC advertising, such as web and social media-based advertising.