Looking at specific drugs, they found that receipt of general payments from a drug’s manufacturer was associated with increased prescribing of sunitinib (50.5% versus 34.4%, P = .01), dasatinib (13.8% versus 11.4%, P = .02), and nilotinib (15.4% vs 12.5%, P = .01).
However, no such association was found for sorafenib or pazopanib.
For imatinib, by contrast, investigators said industry payments were associated with a prescribing decrease.
“This may reflect a strategy by the manufacturer of imatinib, which also produces nilotinib, to promote switching to nilotinib before the patent expiration of imatinib in 2015,” the researchers wrote.
Dr. Mitchell and his coauthors reported no conflict of interest disclosures related to the study.
SOURCE: Mitchell AP, et al. JAMA Intern Med. 2018 Apr 9. doi: 0.1001/jamainternmed.2018.0776.