How common is off-label drug prescription?

McGill team examines the practice of prescribing medications for indications that have not received regulatory approval from Health Canada. A new McGill University study evaluating off-label prescribing of medications by primary care physicians in Quebec suggests the practice is common, although it varies by medication, patient and physician characteristics. The paper was published online today in the Archives of Internal Medicine. Off-label prescribing is the practice of prescribing medications for indications that have not received regulatory approval by Health Canada. The practice is suspected to be a factor of preventable adverse drug events, the authors write in their study background. "Perhaps one of the most well-known issues around off-label use occurred in the '90s when fen-phen - the unapproved combination of fenfluramine and phentermine as an obesity treatment - was shown to cause cardiac valve damage," explained Tewodros Eguale, the study's lead author. "Likewise, when tiagabine, a drug approved to treat seizures, was used off-label to treat conditions like pain, the drug induced seizures." Eguale, a researcher at McGill's Dept.