Drug Advertising Has Profound Effect on Prescribing

While the United Kingdom prohibits drug companies from advertising prescription medications directly to consumers, drug companies in the United States regularly promote medications such as anti-depressants directly to patients. Prozac provides one of the first and best examples of a prescription medication whose run-away success has been attributed largely to a massive public marketing campaign.

Now it turns out — perhaps unsurprisingly — that these advertisements directly aimed at consumers have a very significant impact on the prescribing trends of doctors. According to a recent summary published in New Scientist:

A study by US researchers shows that actors consulting doctors and mentioning a particular antidepressant drug advertised on television are much more likely to get that prescription than if they do not request any medication.

“Our study supplies direct experimental evidence that DTC [Editor's Note: DTC = "direct to consumer"] advertisement-driven requests, along with general requests, dramatically boost prescribing” writes the team, led by Richard Kravitz at the University of California, Davis, US.

The researchers acknowledge that these requests can prevent the initial under-treatment of major depression. “But DTC advertising is a two-edged sword, driving requests that seem to be especially effective at encouraging prescribing when drugs may not be needed”.

(Also see the press release from the team conducting the study.)

This study suggests that well-advertised drugs may be prescribed more often than clinical indications would otherwise suggest (i.e., more often than necessary for the well-being of the patient). It also suggests that the public perception of a specific drug’s ’success’ or effectiveness may be based in part not just on direct advertisements, but also on the resulting higher likelihood that a doctor will actually prescribe the medication. In other words, advertisements have both a direct and an indirect impact on the public perception of a drug’s ’success’ or effectiveness: the direct impact comes from the advertisements themselves, while the indirect effects come from the fact that doctors will actually prescribe the medication with a higher probability.

The original article reporting the study is available from the American Medical Association.

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