Ahmed Jamee, Modica de Mohac Laura, Mackey Tim K, Raimi-Abraham Bahijja Tolulope
Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Cancer and Pharmaceutical Science, King's College London, London, UK.
Department of Anesthesiology and Division of Infectious Diseases and Global Public Health, School of Medicine, UC San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.
J Med Access. 2022 Feb 15;6:23992026221074548. doi: 10.1177/23992026221074548. eCollection 2022 Jan-Dec.
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.
互联网的同步扩张以及制药行业日益全球化，这意味着药品可以从合法和非法渠道跨国获取。与此同时，网上不合标准和伪造药品（SFMs）的情况有所增加。这些产品不符合监管或质量标准，和/或由不合格成分构成，会产生不良药理作用，包括可能造成伤害甚至死亡。本综述旨在识别原创研究，这些研究考察了网上销售SFMs的特点、对网上购药的态度以及应对这一药物安全挑战的策略。使用《科学网》和《医学期刊数据库》搜索了“不合标准”、“伪造”/“假冒”、“药品”/“药物”以及“在线”/“互联网”等关键词。符合该研究纳入标准的文献被纳入综述，并对每篇论文的研究结果进行评估。从最初的185篇文献中，有7篇符合纳入标准，可供综述。这些文章包括对网上购买的SFMs进行测试的研究、对网上SFMs的态度和知识的调查，以及检测非法网上销售的网站内容分析。发现的挑战包括消费者和医生缺乏知识和意识，此外还存在通过互联网平台和社交媒体进行直接面向消费者的广告宣传，使得人们很容易获取SFMs。尽管如此，药品认证技术、网站验证方法和新的检测方法被确定为针对网上销售SFMs的潜在解决方案。为应对网上销售SFMs的问题，需要开展更有力的研究、提高认识/开展教育项目、采用分析检测方法并加强更严格的全球在线治理。
