Trial reportBritish journal of clinical pharmacology2004
Quality of drug information on the World Wide Web and strategies to improve pages with poor information quality. An intervention study on pages about sildenafil.
Trial report in British journal of clinical pharmacology, 2004. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Trust, Information Appraisal, and Health Communication Behaviours Among People Living with Multiple Sclerosis.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Evaluating the effectiveness and limitations of online health information tools in assessing the quality of medication-related content.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Analysis of the quality of meningioma education resources available on the Internet.Neuro-oncology practice · 2021Article
- Quality and Readability of Web-Based Information for Patients With Pancreatic Cysts: DISCERN and Readability Test Analysis.JMIR cancer · 2021Article
- Websites, Websites Everywhere: How Thyroid Cancer Patients Use the Internet.Journal of cancer education : the official journal of the American Association for Cancer Education · 2020Article
- Malignant websites? Analyzing the quality of prostate cancer education web resources.Canadian Urological Association journal = Journal de l'Association des urologues du Canada · 2018Article
- Completeness, accuracy, and presentation of information on interactions between prescription drugs and alternative medicines: an internet review.Studies in health technology and informatics · 2013Review
- The quality of websites addressing fibromyalgia: an assessment of quality and readability using standardised tools.BMJ open · 2011Article
- [Assessment of websites with information on medicines].Atencion primaria · 2009Article
- Drug safety information through the internet: the experience of an Italian website.Drug safety · 2009Article
- The internet as a tool in clinical pharmacology.British journal of clinical pharmacology · 2006Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
aimsThe generally poor quality of health information on the world wide web (WWW) has caused preventable adverse outcomes. Quality management of information on the internet is therefore critical given its widespread use. In order to develop strategies for the safe use of drugs, we scored general and content quality of pages about sildenafil and performed an intervention to improve their quality.
methodsThe internet was searched with Yahoo and AltaVista for pages about sildenafil and 303 pages were included. For assessment of content quality a score based on accuracy and completeness of essential drug information was assigned. For assessment of general quality, four criteria were evaluated and their association with high content quality was determined by multivariate logistic regression analysis. The pages were randomly allocated to either control or intervention group. Evaluation took place before, as well as 7 and 22 weeks after an intervention which consisted of two letters with individualized feedback information on the respective page which were sent electronically to the address mentioned on the page.
resultsProviding references to scientific publications or prescribing information was significantly associated with high content quality (odds ratio: 8.2, 95% CI 3.2, 20.5). The intervention had no influence on general or content quality.
conclusionsTo prevent adverse outcomes caused by misinformation on the WWW individualized feedback to the address mentioned on the page was ineffective. It is currently probably the most straight-forward approach to inform lay persons about indicators of high information quality, i.e. the provision of references.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.