FDAnews Marketing and Sales Bulletin

FDA-Approved Drug Makes Users Hypersexual and Compulsive Gamblers (BrandweekNRX)
GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) updated its package insert for its restless legs syndrome (RLS) drug, Requip, to say that the drug also causes “‘pathological gambling,’ and ‘increased libido, including hypersexuality,’” Peter Rost writes.

“The GlaxoSmithKline package insert for Requip claims these unusual side effects are a class effect, and says, ‘Impulse control symptoms, including compulsive behaviors such as pathological gambling and hypersexuality, have been reported in patients treated with dopaminergic agents,’” he continues.

After wondering what other drugs would cause similar side effects, Rost writes that former Pfizer drug Mirapex, which Pfizer allows Boehringer Ingelheim to market, can change a person’s personality overnight.

“According to the Mirapex package insert, ‘patients taking certain medicines to treat Parkinson’s disease or RLS, including Mirapex … have reported problems with gambling, compulsive eating and increased sex drive,’” Rost writes.

“When will Pfizer attempt to combine Viagra with Mirapex,” he asks. “This isn’t as far fetched as you think.”

State-Sponsored Pharma Ads: It Could Happen (Pharma Marketing Blog)
A new Cornell study suggests the more ads smokers see for smoking-cessation products and anti-smoking campaigns, the more likely they are to successfully quit smoking, John Mack writes. To make sure the trend continues, the study’s co-author, Cornell professor Alan Mathios, believes the government should give pharmaceutical companies money to do more direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising.

In a radio interview, Mathios claimed that “‘if the pharmaceutical industry spent an extra 10 percent per year in anti-smoking product advertising in magazines, that would cause an additional 80,000 people to quit smoking,’” Mack writes. However, Mathios pointed out that mandatory risk disclosures cause ads for prescription smoking-cessation products to be more heavily regulated than cigarette ads.

If ads are really causing people to quit without taking the products, then they are generating benefits to society that are not “‘being incorporated into [the advertiser’s] profit,’” Mathios said.

“Here we have a study surely to be embraced by the pharma industry in support of its long-standing argument that DTC performs a public service,” Mack writes. “They will definitely cite the study to make the case that DTC advertising should not be hobbled in any way by the government — not even by imposing a temporary, product-selective moratorium.”