[ad_1]
AA new study shows that increased efforts to market addictive painkillers to physicians have led to increased efforts to reverse the opioid crisis, resulting in an increase in prescriptions and overdose deaths. Interestingly, the influence of the industry on doctors was greater depending on the number of interactions, not the amount of money paid to talk about or the value of the gifts, such as than meals.
Between August 2013 and December 2015, drug manufacturers made almost 435,000 payments totaling $ 39.7 million to 67,500 physicians in 2,200 counties in the United States. They concerned meals, travel expenses, consultations and consultations, but not research. And the data showed that the more there was marketing directed to the doctors of a given country, the higher the number of overdoses was, regardless of the money spent.
Specifically, in a county of 100,000 people, three additional payments to doctors were linked to 18% of deaths in addition to prescription opioids, according to the study published Friday in the JAMA Network Open. . And an author, Dr. Scott Hadland, pediatrician and adolescent addiction specialist at the Boston Medical Center, said that a previous study revealed that more than 9 marketing interactions with a physician were for a meal, indicating that drug manufacturers spent relatively little money to win. their attention.
publicity
The latest findings "suggest that the important thing is not so much the high value of payments to a few doctors, but the low value of payments to many doctors, for things like meals," said the Dr. Magdalena Cerda, Associate Professor of Population Health. at the NYU School of Medicine. "The number of interactions rather than the amount paid by the doctors" contributes to the prescription and the number of deaths.
The authors of the study acknowledged that their badysis – which used data from the federal government's Open Payments database and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on opioid prescribing and mortality by Overdose – only resulted in an badociation, not a direct cause. In other words, it is a sophisticated effort to connect important points.
The badysis measured the marketing of the industry in three ways: the total dollar value of payments received by physicians; the number of payments made by the drug manufacturers; and the number of physicians who received payments. The study found that payments were concentrated in countries with more high school graduates, higher unemployment, lower poverty, higher median household income and lower income inequality.
"This probably suggests that there was systematic targeting of some counties," Cerda said.
In addition, it appears to be the first study that links opioid marketing to opioid overdose deaths. For these reasons, the results are likely to put even greater pressure on the pharmaceutical industry, which already bears the responsibility for the opioid prescription drug crisis. An increasing number of cities, counties and states have filed lawsuits to blame opioid manufacturers for minimizing risks and encouraging inappropriate prescriptions. A long-awaited trial is scheduled for later this year.
Earlier this week, meanwhile, a lawsuit filed by the Mbadachusetts Attorney General that, until recently, had been redacted, alleged that Purdue Pharma had covered the country with sales representatives, influenced the legislation and provided generous grants to medical institutions and universities in order to praise OxyContin. Disclosure caused a particular scandal: A member of the Sackler family, the company's owner, launched a strategy to shift the blame for addiction and overdoses on those who became dependent.
Although the researchers did not distinguish between the marketing activities of some companies, they looked at county-by-county data in the United States. The numbers were sobering. Take Cabell County, West Virginia, where 6.6 payments were made to the industry per 1,000 people from 2013 to 2015, and the opioid prescription rate was 122 per 100 people. At the same time, the overdose death rate of opioid prescriptions was 93 per 100,000 people in 2016, the highest in the country.
"All of this marketing could go against efforts to reduce the number of overdose deaths," said Hadland.
The result, he added, is that decision makers should consider marketing limitations.
Ed Silverman
Columnist Pharmalot, Senior Writer
Ed covers the pharmaceutical industry.
[ad_2]
Source link
