STAT+: Does a drug’s name affect how patients and doctors perceive it? The FDA wants to know
Drug makers may spend untold sums of money giving medicines zippy names. Now, regulators want to know the effect these nomenclatures have on perceptions held by consumers and doctors.
So the Food and Drug Administration is launching what it says is the first such study to learn how names may affect perceptions of how effective a drug is or the given conditions it is approved to treat. The plan is to query 500 consumers and 500 health care providers about fictional “extreme and neutral” names for high cholesterol and acid reflux drugs: CuresFlux and Zerpexin.
