When the Food and Drug Administration issues cautions about prescription drugs, does that deter people from taking the meds? Maybe, maybe not. A recent study published in "Med Care," entitled "Impact of FDA drug risk communications on healthcare utilization and health behaviors: A systematic review," showed that patients' reactions to the potential for adverse effects varied widely.
The researchers looked at literature from January 1990 to November 2010 and concluded that sometimes those black boxes on medication labels scare people away, as in the case of the diet drug Avandia. Other warnings, however, go essentially unheeded. This was true for long-acting beta-agonists without inhaled controller medications. The stated risk of adverse reactions didn't have any significant impact on the use of those drugs by people with asthma.
According to an article on HealthCanal.com, one of the study's authors, G. Caleb Alexander, MD said, "Communicating risk to large groups of people is a complex science. But success or failure at this can have significant consequences. As such efforts become more and more common -- with the FDA's mandate to establish a more active surveillance system -- we will need a better understanding of how to make them work and where they can go wrong. And we need more and better studies of the successes and failures of this process."
