Pitching Drugs To Physicians: Disclosing Limitations Of Clinical Data May Be Beneficial

US FDA study finds that sales aids for oncology drugs that disclose a study’s data limitations and clinical uncertainty can lead to more appropriate assessments of the data by physicians but does not affect their overall perceptions of a drug’s benefits.

Cancer clinical trial
Study assesses value of disclosing limitations of trial data in sales aids for oncology drugs • Source: Alamy

Data displays depicting preliminary clinical data in a prescription drug promotional piece can be confusing and lead physicians to make unsupported conclusions, US Food and Drug Administration researchers observed. So they set out to determine whether disclosing data limitations and clinical uncertainty of studies cited in sales aids for cancer products can mitigate potentially misleading presentations of preliminary or descriptive data.

The FDA’s Office of Prescription Drug Promotion conducted a study in which oncologists, primary care physicians with oncology experience, and primary care physicians without oncology experience viewed one version of...

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