Quality of Pharmaceutical Industry Press Releases Based on Original Research

Background: Press releases are a popular vehicle to disseminate health information to the lay media. While the quality of press releases issued by scientific conferences and medical journals has been questioned, no efforts to assess pharmaceutical industry press releases have been made. Therefore, we sought to systematically examine pharmaceutical company press releases about original research for measures of quality. Methodolgy/Principal Findings: Press releases issued by the ten top selling, international pharmaceutical companies in the year 2005 were selected for evaluation. A total of 1028 electronic press releases were issued and 235 were based on original research. More than half (59%) reported results presented at a scientific meeting. Twenty-one percent of releases were not explicit about the source of original data. While harms or adverse events were commonly cited (76%), study limitations were rarely noted (6%). Almost one-third (29%) of releases did not quantify study results. Studies presented in abstract form were subsequently published within at least 20 months in 53 % of cases. Conclusions: Pharmaceutical company press releases frequently report basic study details. However, readers should be cautioned by the preliminary nature of the data and lack of identified limitations. Methods to improve the reporting and interpretation of drug company press releases are desirable to prevent misleading media coverage

Reimagining Long-term Antibiotics in Persons Who Inject Drugs: Time to Shift the Status Quo?

In the United States, there are an estimated 744,000 individuals who have engaged in recent injection drug use (IDU) and 6.6 million individuals who have ever injected a drug.1 The practice of IDU predisposes individuals to serious bacterial and fungal infections that often require long-term intravenous antibiotics. In individuals without IDU, these serious infections are often treated with outpatient parenteral antibiotic therapy (OPAT). However, a different standard exists for many persons who inject drugs (PWID)—the mandated completion of antibiotics in an inpatient setting. Though mandating inpatient antibiotic therapy for PWID is a widely adopted standard, this practice is not evidence based and may increase overall costs to the healthcare system. In 2012, in a qualityimprovement initiative, UKHealthCare established a protocol for treating appropriate PWID with OPAT.2 They found very few inpatient providers willing to discharge PWID on OPAT, even with an established protocol

Relationship of Fetal Ultrasound Measurements to Postnatal Anthropometric Variables and Maternal Measurements

Understanding of the continuity of fetal with postnatal growth and the heritability of fetal size has been based largely on studies of birth size. Because intrauterine influences may be greater near birth, birth size may be a poor representative of growth earlier in fetal life. This paper presents correlations between ultrasound dimensions measured twice during fetal life between 13 and 36 weeks of gestation and analogous anthropometric variables measured twice postnatally between 6 and 16 months on the same individuals (n=51). Measurements taken during these age intervals should be free of the most intensified intrauterine influences operating near birth. Shared variance between the two periods (about 10-35%) is significant but substantially lower than variance shared between measurements taken within each period (36 to 90%). Correlations between the repeated fetal measurements are lower than those between postnatal dimensions (0.6 versus 0.9). Maternal linear and cranial dimensions have higher associations with postnatal than with fetal measurements, while measures of maternal prepregnancy body fatness are negatively associated with fetal cranial dimensions. Birth weight has similar correlations with fetal and postnatal measurements (between 0.3 and 0.5). However, birth weight explains significant variance for fetal cranial dimensions but not fetal femur length. These findings indicate that significant variance in fetal size is shared with postnatal size. Greater continuity is apparent for linear (femur length and recumbent length) than for cranial dimensions. This suggests that intrauterine influences may have more intense effects on cranial than on linear growth

Clinical laboratory testing in the era of directly acting antiviral therapies for hepatitis c

Directly acting antiviral (DAA) combination therapies for chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection are highly effective, but treatment decisions remain complex. Laboratory testing is important to evaluate a range of viral, host, and pharmacological factors when considering HCV treatment, and patients must be monitored during and after therapy for safety and to assess the viral response. In this review, we discuss the laboratory tests relevant for the treatment of HCV infection in the era of DAA therapy, grouped according to viral and host factors