ArticlePLoS medicine2006
What are the public health effects of direct-to-consumer drug advertising?
Article in PLoS medicine, 2006. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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
28 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Meta-Analysis of the Placebo Response in Chronic and Episodic Migraine: Insights from Migraine Preventive Drug Trials.The AAPS journal · 2025Pooled it
- Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs and the Patient-Prescriber Encounter: A Systematic Review.Health communication · 2020Pooled it
- Raising Placebo Efficacy in Antidepressant Trials Across Decades Explained by Small-Study Effects: A Meta-Reanalysis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2020Pooled it
- Potential spillover educational effects of cancer-related direct-to-consumer advertising on cancer patients' increased information seeking behaviors: results from a cohort study.Journal of cancer education : the official journal of the American Association for Cancer Education · 2014Trial
- Getting to "no": strategies primary care physicians use to deny patient requests.Archives of internal medicine · 2010Trial
- Factors affecting physicians' responses to patients' requests for antidepressants: focus group study.Journal of general internal medicine · 2008Trial
- Exploring medicine classification and accessibility: a qualitative study.Journal of pharmaceutical policy and practice · 2025Article
- Stakeholder analysis of banning unhealthy product advertisement in Iran.BMC health services research · 2024Article
- Laypersons' understanding of statistical concepts commonly used in prescription drug promotion: A review of the research literature.Research in social & administrative pharmacy : RSAP · 2024Article
- Review
- Constructing the Gendered Risk of Illness in Lyrica Ads for Fibromyalgia: Fear of Isolation as a Motivating Narrative for Consumer Demand.The Journal of medical humanities · 2022Article
- The Use of Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) Pharmaceutical Advertisements in Televised and Print Formats as a Teaching Tool in a Pharmacy Curriculum.Pharmacy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Use of High-Dose Influenza and Live Attenuated Influenza Vaccines by US Primary Care Physicians.Journal of general internal medicine · 2021Article
- PrEP4Love: The Role of Messaging and Prevention Advocacy in PrEP Attitudes, Perceptions, and Uptake Among YMSM and Transgender Women.Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes (1999) · 2020Article
- Article
- Article
- Feeling Is Believing: Evaluative Conditioning and the Ethics of Pharmaceutical Advertising.Journal of bioethical inquiry · 2016Article
- Effects of Televised Direct-to-Consumer Advertising for Varenicline on Prescription Dispensing in the United States, 2006-2009.Nicotine & tobacco research : official journal of the Society for Research on Nicotine and Tobacco · 2016Article
- General public knowledge, perceptions and practice towards pharmaceutical drug advertisements in the Western region of KSA.Saudi pharmaceutical journal : SPJ : the official publication of the Saudi Pharmaceutical Society · 2014Article
- Dynamic modeling of patient and physician eye gaze to understand the effects of electronic health records on doctor-patient communication and attention.International journal of medical informatics · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
background to the debateOnly two industrialized countries, the United States and New Zealand, allow direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription medicines, although New Zealand is planning a ban. The challenge for these governments is ensuring that DTCA is more beneficial than harmful. Proponents of DTCA argue that it helps to inform the public about available treatments and stimulates appropriate use of drugs for high-priority illnesses (such as statin use in people with ischemic heart disease). Critics argue that the information in the adverts is often biased and misleading, and that DTCA raises prescribing costs without net evidence of health benefits.
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.