‘Patients requesting specific medications can have a profound effect on physicians prescribing medications for major depression, according to a new study in the April 27 issue of JAMA.

“Spending on direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs in the United States totaled $3.2 billion in 2003,” the authors provide as background information. “Critics charge that DTC advertisements lead to overprescribing of unnecessary, expensive, and potentially harmful medications, while proponents counter that they can serve a useful educational function and help avert underuse of effective treatments for conditions that may be poorly recognized, highly stigmatized, or both.” The authors add that “antidepressant medications consistently rank among the top DTC advertising categories.”’

‘”One thing is clear: patients can prompt physicians to provide better care. Drug ads are one way of getting patients to prompt their physicians – but it is not the best way. When patients brought up non-commercial information they were more likely to get the correct treatment than if they brought up the drug advertisement.”

By University of Rochester Medical Center , Direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertising – a $3.2 billion industry in the United States – not only sways patients to ask for certain medications, but profoundly influences the way doctors make initial treatment decisions, according to an April 27 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

University of Rochester Medical Center Professor Ronald M. Epstein, M.D., had a lead role in the research, which focused on antidepressants, as they consistently rank among the top advertised drugs. The study showed that doctors prescribed antidepressants far more often when patients asked for them. Furthermore, the study revealed that consumer advertising may have competing effects on health-care quality, by promoting the overuse of drugs in some cases while also averting under use and raising consumer awareness of disease.’