The vague terms of post-market drug safety warnings from the TGA and other watchdogs mean they only have small effects on doctors’ prescribing habits, researchers say.

A meta-analysis has found that safety warnings on specific drugs led to only a 6% reduction in the prescribing rate on average, said the international research team, led by Associate Professor Barbara Mintzes from the University of Sydney.

A separate study looking at the wording of the safety advisories found that doctors were often told to monitor patients for adverse events but were not told “when and how often to monitor, critical thresholds and how to respond”.

“Although advisories aim to inform clinical care, a key finding of interviews with doctors is the disconnect between clinical information sources they rely on routinely, and regulatory information,” the review authors wrote in a commentary in Expert Opinion on Drug Safety.