Benefits and harms of drug treatments

Patients' expectations of the benefits and harms of treatments, screening, and tests: a systematic review.

IMPORTANCE Unrealistic patient expectations of the benefits and harms of interventions can influence decision making and may be contributing to increasing intervention uptake and health care costs. OBJECTIVE To systematically review all studies that have quantitatively assessed patients' expectations of the benefits and/or harms of any treatment, test, or screening test. EVIDENCE REVIEW A c...

What are the comparative benefits and harms of augmentation treatments in major depression?

The majority of depressed patients do not experience sufficient response to their initial antidepressant medication. Augmentation strategies, particularly the use of atypical antipsychotics to augment selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), have proliferated over the last 15 years, and 2 atypical antipsychotics, aripiprazole and quetiapine, have received US Food and Drug Administration...

Judging the benefits and harms of medicines.

How should society judge the safety and efficacy of drugs? This was the question posed by England’s chief medical officer, Sally Davies, in February 2015. Citing controversies about oseltamivir (Tamiflu) and statins, as well as growing disquiet about overmedication by doctors and conflicts of interest among researchers, she feared an erosion of public trust and asked the Academy of Medical Scie...

The benefits and harms of deprescribing.

Deprescribing is the process of trial withdrawal of inappropriate medications. Currently, the strongest evidence for benefit of deprescribing is from cohort and observational studies of withdrawal of specific medication classes that have shown better patient outcomes, mainly through resolution of adverse drug reactions. Additional potential benefits of deprescribing include reduced financial co...

Thiazolidinediones: do harms outweigh benefits?