The New York Times (2/3, B3, Thomas, Subscription Publication, 9.97M) is reporting that “the main system for keeping track of the dangerous side effects of prescription drugs is deeply flawed, primarily because drug makers are submitting incomplete information about the problems to the” FDA, “according to a new study by” the Institute for Safe Medicine Practices (ISMP), “a nonprofit group that tracks drug safety issues.” An FDA spokesman “acknowledged that adverse-event reports were often incomplete, and said improving the system was ‘of great interest’ to the agency.” But, “doing so ‘is challenging because of the voluntary nature of the reporting.’”
Similarly, The Wall Street Journal (2/2, Silverman, 5.67M) “Pharmalot” blog reports that although the ISMP says reports can only be considered reasonably complete when they include patient age, gender and event date, only 49% of reports contained that information. Additionally, the analysis found that 67% of death reports were of limited value due to incomplete information about the cause of death and the possible role of a medicine. Thomas Moore, an ISMP senior scientist, attributes the lack of completeness in reporting in part to the fact that the FDA’s adverse-alert system has not been updated since 2001 despite the fact that the pharmaceutical market has evolved immensely, yielding new interactions between drugmakers, patient, and consumers.