Analysis of Rationality of Claims of Pharmaceutical Companies on Drug Promotional Literature (DPL) by 2nd Year Medical Students Using the WHO Guidelines

Background: Drug promotional literature (DPL) forms an integral part of drug promotion.But, many pharmaceutical companies promote their products unethically.This is dangerous for young graduates and medical students as the both cannot understand the consequences of irrational prescription.So, the planning of this study was done to evaluate the DPLs based on WHO criteria.Materials and methods: A total of 162 DPLs were collected from the hospital attached to SGRDIMSR, Amritsar, Punjab, India for evaluation.A four-point pre-validated questionnaire-based checklist for critical evaluation of DPL was generated based on the objective structured practical examination (OSPE) skills development program of medical curriculum in the subject of pharmacology of in MBBS second year students.Results: Out of 162, 58.6% had single drug and 41.4% had fixed-dose composition.Out of the all DPLs, only 16% of the DPL mentioned the major adverse drug reactions (ADRs).Only 15% of the DPLs mentioned about precaution, contraindications, warnings, and 1.8% of the DPLs mentioned about major interactions, 32.9% of DPLs made false claims about their product with catchy statement and 40.7%.Drug promotional literatures had irrelevant pictures.In contrast, 55.7 and 52.1% showed relevant charts and tables.The information about excipients was present in none of the DPL.The information about safety of the drug, such as ADRs, drug interaction, contraindications was not adequate. Conclusion:The findings indicates that none of the DPLs fulfilled all the WHO criteria of DPL.Therefore, both physicians and medical students need to be educated during their primitive and formative years about evaluating DPLs.