Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
The primary reasons is that it is much faster and less expensive to repurpose an existing drug for a new disease than trying to identify a new therapeutic agent. A paper by Islam et al. (2021) explains why: Available information. A repurposed drug has an extensive portfolio of knowledge relating to human pharmacokinetics, bioavailability and…
How frequently are pharmaceuticals used off label? Perhaps more than you think. Although these figures are a bit dated, Tabarrok (2000) details the extent of off-label prescribing in the U.S. as follows: According to a study by the U.S. General Accounting Office, 56 percent of cancer patients have been given non-FDA-approved prescriptions, and 33 percent…
When each drug is approved by the FDA, the drug is not approved to treat all patients. Each drug receives an “indication” which basically represents the types of patients the drug can treat. Giving the treatment to patients with said indication is known as “on label” prescribing. Drugs developed to treat one disease may sometimes…
Aaron Carroll of the Incidental Economist draws on a column from his colleague Austin Frakt in The Upshot to explain why there is not more research into off-label uses of patented or generic drugs.
Approximately one in five prescriptions for drugs in the US are for off label use. In some cases, this may be inapprorpiate as there is typically limited clinical evidence supporting off label use. In other cases, off label use is approrpiate. Clinical trials rarely enroll children or pregnant women and thus medictions are often not…
The Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy has a great overview of some of the issues related to off-label prescribing. Below is a summary of some key points from this article. What is off-label prescribing? Off-label prescribing and use can take many forms, such as use of an approved drug for an unapproved clinical indication, use at…