Study: Risky drug samples given to kids

A new study suggests that free drug samples, an effective marketing tool for the drug industry, do little to help the poor and may put children's health at risk.

The study, being published today in the journal Pediatrics, analyzed an in-depth survey conducted in 2004 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that asked people how they got health care. Respondents were asked if they received free drug samples. It found that children in the lowest income group were no more likely to receive the samples than were those in the highest income group, in part because the poor are less likely to see doctors.

Once in a doctor's office, children who lacked health insurance were more likely to receive free drug samples than their well-insured counterparts.

But of greater concern, the authors wrote, are the kinds of drug samples that physicians provided. In 2004, the year of the CDC survey, more than 500,000 children received samples of four medicines that were later the subject of serious safety warnings required by the Food and Drug Administration: Advair, for asthma; Adderall and Strattera, both for attention-deficit disorder; and Elidel, for eczema.