Flimsy Evidence Behind Many FDA Approvals

Many drugs granted accelerated approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lack clear evidence of safety and effectiveness, and the same is true for most high-risk medical devices, according to two new reports in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The Accelerated Approval pathway makes potentially promising investigational medicines available for use before the usual amount of data has been collected to confirm their effectiveness and safety, Dr. Huseyin Naci from the London School of Economics and Political Science told Reuters Health by email.

“Drugs granted Accelerated Approval should be rigorously evaluated using convincing patient-centered clinical outcomes in rigorous studies,” Naci said. But, he added, “we have found numerous situations in which required confirmatory studies with rigorous designs and outcomes are not pursued or are not completed in a timely fashion, and in these cases, we are concerned that regulators appear to accept data that would not otherwise meet FDA standards.”

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