Contents of US Food and Drug Administration Refuse-to-File Letters for New Drug Applications and Efficacy Supplements and Their Public Disclosure by Applicants.

Importance: Before reviewing drug applications, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducts "filing reviews" to assess whether they are complete enough for full review. If the applications are incomplete, the FDA issues refuse-to-file (RTF) letters identifying deficiencies. The FDA does not make these RTF letters public at the time of issuance.

Public Disclosure of the Filing of New Drug and Therapeutic Biologics Applications With the US Food and Drug Administration.

This cross-sectional study reviews New Drug Applications for new molecular entities and Biologics License Applications for new and biosimilar biological products submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration to assess how frequently applicants disclose applications in the media.

Comparison of content of FDA letters not approving applications for new drugs and associated public announcements from sponsors: cross sectional study.

Objectives: To describe the content of non-public complete response letters issued by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) when they do not approve marketing applications from sponsors (drug companies) and to compare them with the content any subsequent press releases issued by those sponsors

Design: Cross sectional study.

Data Sources: All applications for which FDA's Center for Drug Evaluation and Research initially issued complete response letters (n=61) from 11 August 2008 to 27 June 2013. Complete response letters and press releases were divided into discrete statements related to seven domains and 64 subdomains and assessed to determine whether they matched.

Under-reporting of cardiovascular events in the rofecoxib Alzheimer disease studies.

Background: In September 2004, rofecoxib (Vioxx) was removed from the market after it was found to produce a near doubling of cardiovascular thrombotic (CVT) events in a placebo-controlled study. Its manufacturer stated that this was the first clear evidence of such risk and criticized previous analyses of earlier CVT risk for focusing on investigator-reported events. We studied contemporaneously adjudicated CVT events to assess the information on cardiovascular risk available while the drug was in widespread use.