8Aug

Juvederm XC

Posted in Injectables

Take a look at the Juvederm XC ad, which I found in theNew Yorker Magazine, which (coincidentally) includes an article about treatment of wrinkles (“Face It: The Truth About Wrinkles”). The article does not mention Juvederm and hardly has anything at all to say about injection of gels into the skin. Do you think this ad is “fair and balanced”; ie, presents risk information that is “comparable in depth and detail with the claims for effectiveness or safety” as required by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act? FDA issues “notice of violation (NOV)” letters to drug companies when it feels that promotional pieces overly minimizes risk information. Should FDA send a NOV letter to Allergan, which markets Juvederm? “Promotional materials are misleading,” said FDA in a recent letter to Meda Pharmaceuticals regarding an Astelin promo piece (see “FDA Warns Meda Pharmaceuticals that Astelin Isn’t Approved as a Cure for House Cleaning!”), “if they fail to present information about risks associated with a drug with a prominence and readability reasonably comparable with the presentation of information relating to the effectiveness of the drug.” With regard to the Astelin promo piece, FDA noted “the only risk information contained on the sign (a disclosure of common adverse events) is presented at the bottom of the sign after the indication for the drug in extremely small font size and in a single-spaced format that makes this information very difficult to read.” Clearly, the Juvederm ad also presents risk information in hard to read “mouse typeface.” But let’s take a more scientific, quantitative approach. I compared the area devoted to risk information versus benefit information in both the Astelin and Juvederm ads. My thesis is that there is a similar quantitative de-emphasis of risk information in the latter as in the former and that Allergan should also receive a letter from the FDA.