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A critical review on the availability of substandard and falsified medicines online: Incidence, challenges and perspectives

Simultaneous expansion of the Internet and increased globalisation of the pharmaceutical industry have meant medication can be accessed transnationally from both legal and illicit sources. This has coincided with the rise of substandard and falsified medicines (SFMs) online. These products fail to m...

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Autores principales: Ahmed, Jamee, Modica de Mohac, Laura, Mackey, Tim K, Raimi-Abraham, Bahijja Tolulope
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: SAGE Publications 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9413502/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36204527
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23992026221074548
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author Ahmed, Jamee
Modica de Mohac, Laura
Mackey, Tim K
Raimi-Abraham, Bahijja Tolulope
author_facet Ahmed, Jamee
Modica de Mohac, Laura
Mackey, Tim K
Raimi-Abraham, Bahijja Tolulope
author_sort Ahmed, Jamee
collection PubMed
description Simultaneous expansion of the Internet and increased globalisation of the pharmaceutical industry have meant medication can be accessed transnationally from both legal and illicit sources. This has coincided with the rise of substandard and falsified medicines (SFMs) online. These products fail to meet regulatory or quality standards and/or are constituted with substandard ingredients, causing undesired pharmacological effects, including possible injury and death. This review aimed to identify original research studies that examined characteristics of SFM online sales, attitudes towards purchasing medicines online and strategies to address this drug safety challenge. Keywords of ‘Substandard’ and ‘Falsified’/‘Counterfeit’ and ‘Medicines’/‘Drugs’ and ‘Online’/‘Internet’ were searched using Web of Knowledge and PubMed databases. Resulting literature, which satisfied the study’s inclusion criteria, was included in the review, and the findings from each paper were assessed. From an initial 185 literature articles, 7 were eligible according to the inclusion criteria to be reviewed. These articles identified studies testing SFMs purchased online, surveys of attitudes and knowledge about SFMs online, and website content analysis to detect illegal online sales. Challenges identified were lack of knowledge and awareness among consumers and physicians, in addition to the use of direct-to-consumer-advertising, via Internet platforms and social media, providing easy access to SFMs. Despite this, medicine authentication technology, website verification approaches and new detection methods were identified as potential solutions specific to online SFM sales. To address online sales of SFMs, more robust research, greater awareness/educational programmes, analytical detection methods and more stringent online global governance are required.
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spelling pubmed-94135022022-10-05 A critical review on the availability of substandard and falsified medicines online: Incidence, challenges and perspectives Ahmed, Jamee Modica de Mohac, Laura Mackey, Tim K Raimi-Abraham, Bahijja Tolulope J Med Access The Illicit Trade of Medicines Online and Falsified Medicines Simultaneous expansion of the Internet and increased globalisation of the pharmaceutical industry have meant medication can be accessed transnationally from both legal and illicit sources. This has coincided with the rise of substandard and falsified medicines (SFMs) online. These products fail to meet regulatory or quality standards and/or are constituted with substandard ingredients, causing undesired pharmacological effects, including possible injury and death. This review aimed to identify original research studies that examined characteristics of SFM online sales, attitudes towards purchasing medicines online and strategies to address this drug safety challenge. Keywords of ‘Substandard’ and ‘Falsified’/‘Counterfeit’ and ‘Medicines’/‘Drugs’ and ‘Online’/‘Internet’ were searched using Web of Knowledge and PubMed databases. Resulting literature, which satisfied the study’s inclusion criteria, was included in the review, and the findings from each paper were assessed. From an initial 185 literature articles, 7 were eligible according to the inclusion criteria to be reviewed. These articles identified studies testing SFMs purchased online, surveys of attitudes and knowledge about SFMs online, and website content analysis to detect illegal online sales. Challenges identified were lack of knowledge and awareness among consumers and physicians, in addition to the use of direct-to-consumer-advertising, via Internet platforms and social media, providing easy access to SFMs. Despite this, medicine authentication technology, website verification approaches and new detection methods were identified as potential solutions specific to online SFM sales. To address online sales of SFMs, more robust research, greater awareness/educational programmes, analytical detection methods and more stringent online global governance are required. SAGE Publications 2022-02-15 /pmc/articles/PMC9413502/ /pubmed/36204527 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23992026221074548 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
spellingShingle The Illicit Trade of Medicines Online and Falsified Medicines
Ahmed, Jamee
Modica de Mohac, Laura
Mackey, Tim K
Raimi-Abraham, Bahijja Tolulope
A critical review on the availability of substandard and falsified medicines online: Incidence, challenges and perspectives
title A critical review on the availability of substandard and falsified medicines online: Incidence, challenges and perspectives
title_full A critical review on the availability of substandard and falsified medicines online: Incidence, challenges and perspectives
title_fullStr A critical review on the availability of substandard and falsified medicines online: Incidence, challenges and perspectives
title_full_unstemmed A critical review on the availability of substandard and falsified medicines online: Incidence, challenges and perspectives
title_short A critical review on the availability of substandard and falsified medicines online: Incidence, challenges and perspectives
title_sort critical review on the availability of substandard and falsified medicines online: incidence, challenges and perspectives
topic The Illicit Trade of Medicines Online and Falsified Medicines
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9413502/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36204527
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/23992026221074548
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