February 18th, 2009

Writes Kaiser Network News:

 Consumers are more likely to receive information about medications from magazine advertisements that include a “drug facts box,” rather than the brief summaries currently used, according to a study published on Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine, USA Today reports.

…

The drug facts boxes included information about the side effects of the medications, as well as the rate that the side effects occurred in clinical trials. In addition, the drug facts boxes quantified the benefits of the medications over a placebo and older treatments. The drug facts boxes also included the year that the medications received FDA approval and alternative treatments that do not involve medication.

…

Woloshin said that researchers have begun to design a pilot project in which FDA scientists have drafted drug facts boxes as they review new medications.

Read more at Kaiser.