Advertisements for drugs may not work – maybe

Does direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising for new medications work?

It all depends on how you see the results, apparently.

In an intriguing study, researchers from the University of Alberta compared the number of prescriptions written for 3 newly-introduced drugs in English-speaking Canada with the use of these drugs in Quebec, where the majority of the population speaks French and watches mainly French-only TV.

The reason the researchers thought there might be a discrepancy in the use of these drugs in these two neighbouring populations is that these three drugs were heavily promoted on US (i.e. English-speaking) TV, but no ads for these products were allowed in Canada (only the USA and New Zealand, apparently, allow DTC ads).

The thought was, then, that English-speaking Canadians would see those American ads (god knows we watch much more American TV fare than its equally mindless and even more bland Canadian equivalents, non-bland hockey being the sole exception, of course)and flock to their physicians to get ahold of these drugs, and doctors being such weak-willed individuals who can’t say “no”, would naturally give in and give the patients all the drugs they wanted.

Well, they didn’t and they did, it seems.

Specifically, for two of the drugs, for which cheaper and somewhat equally effective medications already exist, there was no spike in English-speaking Canada (ROC for rest of Canada) compared to Quebec.

For the third drug, which is used to treat irritable bowel syndrome, a condition for which there is no really effective drug therapy, prescriptions did spike by about 40 % in the ROC compared to Quebec, but only for about 2 years, when prescriptions in the ROC slipped back to the same number as in La Belle Province.

So the researchers conclude that DTC advertising has limited effect on both consumers and physicians, especially for conditions for which alternative and cheaper therapies are already out there, which is probably true, but . . .

But the thing that bothers me is that according to figures from the year 2005, the last year for which anyone has any data, pharmaceutical companies spent anywhere from $3 billion to $5 billion (it’s very hard to get exact numbers) on direct-to-consumer advertising, and something tells me that those people wouldn’t spend that kind of money on programs that don’t work.