PJ Letters: Consumer information

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The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7167 p425-429
29 September 2001

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Letters to the Editor

Consumer information

What about side effects and contraindications?

From Mr A. R. Cox, MRPharmS

The Proprietary Association of Great Britain (PAGB) website, www.medicine-chest.co.uk, exists to provide visitors with information on over-the-counter medicines in order to encourage self-care and promote its members products. The site has two articles on drug safety, one laudably recognising the importance of adverse drug reaction reporting and the other entitled “OTCs — safety comes first”.

The latter article emphasises that industry, health professionals, consumer representatives and the regulatory bodies all wish to ensure that medicines are used safely. It sees the challenge as achieving the necessary high level of consumer safety for groups at risk of side effects, without restricting access to products for the majority of those who use them safely.

The article states that targeted consumer information is the way forward and that patients must have the necessary knowledge in order to make sensible decisions about their health independently and to take steps to ensure their own safety. It also discusses patients making risk/ benefit decisions based upon the information they are provided with.

It is, therefore, surprising and disappointing that the information about products on the site fails to include side effects or contraindications.

Taking ibuprofen as an example, none of the ibuprofen products listed gastrointestinal side effects or contraindications. Sinclair et al¹ found that 11 per cent of patients who were using OTC ibuprofen had an active or past history of stomach or peptic ulcer, or an active or past history of asthma. Patients’ ignorance of side effects of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs has led to failures to recognise warning signs, which if acted upon, might have prevented acute gastrointestinal bleeds.²

If the PAGB is serious about industry’s need to provide information to patients in order to allow patients to make informed decisions about risk/benefit, then this site should contain information on side effects and contraindications in order to allow them to do so.

References

1. Sinclair HK, Bond CM, Hannaford PC. Over-the-counter ibuprofen: how and why is it used? Int J Pharm Pract 2000;8:121–7.

2. Wynne HA, Long A. Patient awareness of the adverse effects of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Br J Clin Pharmacol 1996;42:253–6.

Anthony Cox
Senior Pharmacist
City Hospital NHS Trust
Birmingham

SHEILA KELLY, executive director, Proprietary Association of Great Britain, replies:

The website is not intended to replace packaging information or the dialogue between the pharmacist and the patient, which is the best way to give people targeted advice about the use of medicines. However, it is becoming an important source of online information for consumers. We agree that it should include information about the side effects and contraindications of the medicines on it and it will do so by mid October.

Within the medicine-chest website, links to other PAGB websites (CHIC.org.uk, HSIS.org and PAGB.co.uk) provide more general information about nutrition, supplements and illnesses, including the campaigns which we have run with the support of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the National Pharmaceutical Association, the Royal College of Nursing, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Doctor-Patient Partnership. The sites are all being updated now. In the update we are adding the patient information leaflets for the products. These, of course, contain all the information necessary for the safe use of the product, including warnings, side effects, contraindications and interactions.

The three sites are being brought together in a portal called PAGB.net, a comprehensive source of advice on OTC medicines, food supplements, herbal products and the industry. It is designed for consumers and the media to use and promotes the pharmacist as a source of advice and information.

A year after launch, medicine-chest.co.uk has had just over a quarter of a million hits. Feedback from the online questionnaire shows that 84 per cent of users liked it and found it easy to navigate, 90 per cent found the search engine easy to use, 81 per cent found the language and terminology to be about right, 69 per cent found the site useful and 41 per cent felt more comfortable about treating minor ailments using OTC medicines. We hope pharmacists will access PAGB.net, make use of the materials on it with their staff and customers and give us feedback about how we can continue to improve it.

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