Organizing Information on “Dangerous Drugs” Published in Weekly Magazines and Evaluating Its Relevance

Abstract

Objective: Recently, special features on “dangerous” prescription drugs have been frequently published in few mass media platforms, such as weekly magazines. However, to our knowledge, there have been no prior studies, systematically organizing and evaluating the contents of these articles (e.g., drugs and their side effects that are reported). In this study, we aimed to evaluate the relevance of the information on “dangerous drugs” that was published in weekly magazines using the modified “Media Doctor” instrument.

Methods: We extracted articles on “dangerous” prescription drugs from 10 weekly magazines for which the table of contents of previous issues are available on their official websites. Information regarding the target drugs and their classifications was compiled and organized. The relevance of the extracted news articles was assessed by two independent evaluators. The evaluation index was based on the modified “Media Doctor” instrument, and 9 evaluation criteria were used to assign the following categories: satisfactory, unsatisfactory, or not applicable.

Results: A total of 1,064 articles were screened, and 19 articles were selected for further evaluation. A total of 179 drugs (belonging to 34 drug classes) were listed. The most frequently mentioned class of drugs included hypnotics and sedatives, and the most frequently listed was triazolam. Of the 19 articles, 11 had zero items that were judged satisfactory by both the evaluators. The number of unsatisfactory items was widely distributed, but in 11 of the 19 articles, five and more items were judged unsatisfactory by both the evaluators.

Conclusion: We revealed that a wide variety of drugs have been termed as “dangerous” by weekly magazines. Additionally, we found that these articles were inadequate and incomplete with respect to scientific validity, and that there are many aspects that require further improvement.