Disease awareness or subtle product placement? Orphan diseases featured in the television series "House, M.D." - a cross-sectional analysis.

Autor: Mechler K; Department of Addictive Behavior and Addiction Medicine, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany., Rausch J; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Central Institute of Mental Health, Medical Faculty Mannheim, University of Heidelberg, Mannheim, Germany., Mountford WK; University of North Carolina, Wilmington, NC, USA.; Allergan plc., Madison, NJ, USA., Ries M; Division of Pediatric Neurology and Metabolic Medicine, Center for Rare Diseases, Center for Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, University Hospital Heidelberg, INF 430, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany. markus.ries@uni-heidelberg.de.; Center for Rare Diseases, University Hospital Heidelberg, INF 430, 69120, Heidelberg, Germany. markus.ries@uni-heidelberg.de.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: BMC medical ethics [BMC Med Ethics] 2020 Mar 14; Vol. 21 (1), pp. 20. Date of Electronic Publication: 2020 Mar 14.
DOI: 10.1186/s12910-020-0463-x
Abstrakt: Background: Approximately 7% of the general population is affected by an orphan disease, which, in the United States, is defined as affecting fewer than 1 in 1500 people. Disease awareness is often low and time-to-diagnosis delayed. Different legislations worldwide have created incentives for pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for orphan diseases. A journalistic article in Bloomberg Businessweek has claimed that pharmaceutical companies have tried marketing orphan drugs by placing a specific disease into the popular television series "House, M.D." which features diagnostic journeys and was produced between 2004 and 2012. This study aimed to describe the presentation of orphan diseases in the television series "House, M.D.", to test in an exploratory fashion the hypothesis that treatable orphan conditions are overrepresented in "House, M.D." and to discuss whether such marketing practices may or may not be ethical.
Methods: A list of all medical cases depicted in the television series "House, M.D." was obtained and classified as orphan or non-orphan according to the Orphanet database. The ratios of orphan diseases among all diseases, such with an orphan drug designation and such with an orphan drug approval by the FDA were then compared with conservative approximations of real world conditions (chi-squared tests for equality of proportions). STROBE criteria were respected.
Results: Out of a total of n = 181 different medical diagnoses, n = 42 (23.2%) were orphan diseases. The difference in percentages in between "House, M.D." and reality was not statistically significant for orphan diseases overall (p = 0.96), yet was statistically significantly higher for both orphan diseases with one or more orphan drug designations (p = 0.0192) and such with one or more approved orphan drugs (p < 0.0001).
Conclusions: Orphan diseases with a designated and/or approved orphan drug were overrepresented in the television series "House, M.D." with statistical significance while orphan diseases overall were not. This may be explained by (so far) undocumented efforts of pharmaceutical companies to place their orphan drugs in the television series, as described in the article in Bloomberg Businessweek. Further research is needed into marketing practices in popular and emerging media formats.
Databáze: MEDLINE
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