Unintended Effects of Communicating About Drug Safety Issues: A Critical Review of the Literature

AbstractCommunications about the safety and effectiveness of human drugs can influence patients ’ and prescribers’ perceptions and behaviors, which in turn can affect the public’s health more broadly. We conducted a critical review of the literature on the unintended effects from communicating information to the public about safety issues with prescription and over-the-counter drugs. We searched PubMed for peer-reviewed studies published from 1990 to 2017 where study authors reported probable unintended effects of communicating drug safety. The types of communications included in these studies were news reports, direct-to-consumer advertisements, and those released by government ag encies. Among the 26 studies identified, the most commonly reported unintended effects were decreased drug use or discontinuation. Other unintended effects included spillover to populations not targeted by the communications (e.g., discontinuation of antidepressants among adults following communicat ions concerning use among youth), shifts in clinical diagnoses (e.g., fewer diagnoses of depression), increased use of alternative therapies, and other undesirable behaviors (e.g., possible increased suicide attempts because antidepressants were discontinued). Limitations to the literature include t he inability to establish causation or to isolate the effects of multiple communication sources and messages. Further, because the intended effect of many communications was not known, our study was li...
Source: Drug Safety - Category: Drugs & Pharmacology Source Type: research