Not So Wondrous Drugs? - New Warnings about Severe Adverse Effects of New, Heavily Marketed Drugs for Hepatits C,

In conclusion, evidence-based medicine rigorously applied suggests that individual health care and health policy decisions should be driven by the best available evidence, mostly from clinical research, about the benefits and harms of tests, treatments, programs, and so on, in the context of what outcomes matter to patients. The skepticism EBM should engender could lead to health care that is more about patients and their outcomes, and less about ideology, hype, and hucksterism. If only such skepticism were easier to find........APPENDIX - Clinical Research about Hepatitis C TreatmentsStarting in March, 2014, we haveposted about the lack of good evidence from clinical research suggesting these drugs are in fact so wondrous.  The drugs are now touted as " cures, " at least by the drug companies, (lookhere), and physicians are urged to do widespread screening to find patients with asymptomatic hepatitis C so they can benefit from early, albeit expensive treatment.However, as we pointed out (e.g.,here andhere)-  The best evidence available suggests that most patients with hepatitis C will not go on to have severe complications of the disease (cirrhosis, liver failure, liver cancer), and hence could not benefit much from treatment.-  There is no evidence from randomized controlled trials that treatment prevents most of these severe complications-  There is no clear evidence that " sustained virologic response, " (SVR), the surrogate outcome measure promo...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Management Tags: adverse effects clinical trials deception evidence-based medicine Gilead hepatitis C marketing Sovaldi Source Type: blogs