How we source our information

Seventy-one product pages on this site describe what a medicine does, at what dose, to whom it should not be given and what it interacts with. None of that is written from experience, memory or a competitor’s page. This is where it comes from, document by document, so that any sentence can be traced back and checked by whoever wants to check it.

The primary source: approved labelling

For every molecule in the catalogue the starting point is the manufacturer’s labelling as approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and published in DailyMed, the National Library of Medicine’s register of current prescribing information. Strengths, dosage forms, indications, contraindications, interaction warnings and the boxed warnings where they exist are taken from that document. Each product page links to the current label for its active ingredient, so the comparison takes one click rather than an act of faith.

Where the molecule is also licensed in Europe, the label is read against the summary of product characteristics held by the European Medicines Agency. The two documents usually agree; where they differ — and on maximum doses in older patients, or on whether a warning is boxed, they sometimes do — the page says so instead of quietly picking the friendlier version.

The secondary sources

Anything that goes beyond the label — how often a side effect actually turns up, how one molecule compares with another, what happens when treatment stops — comes from published research, and only from research that can be found by its own identifier: a PubMed record, a DOI, a Cochrane review. Clinical guidance from bodies that publish their methods, such as the European Association of Urology or the American Urological Association, is used the same way. Nothing is sourced from forums, from a manufacturer’s marketing material, or from another retailer’s product description.

Package photographs are a case in point. The images on these pages are the manufacturers’ own package and label photographs filed with the FDA and published in DailyMed, cropped to the pack. No product photograph on this site is generated, mocked up or borrowed from a repackager’s listing, because a picture of a box is a factual claim about what arrives.

Who writes, who reads it before publication

The catalogue text is written in-house by the practice. Material touching sexual function, sexual dysfunction and mental health — which is most of this catalogue — is read before publication by Dr. Andrea Biserni, psychologist, psychotherapist and clinical sexologist, registered with the Ordine degli Psicologi della Toscana under n. 3572, section A, and verifiable in the national register. His competence is clinical and psychological, not pharmaceutical, and the limit is observed rather than blurred: he does not rewrite dosing, he does not soften a contraindication, and where a page states a dose it states it in the regulator’s words.

That division is the whole point. A psychologist reviewing a tablet’s milligram schedule would be a credential used as decoration. A psychologist reading what a page says about performance anxiety, about antidepressant-induced loss of orgasm, or about what happens to a couple when the prescription runs out, is a credential doing work.

When pages are checked again

Every product page carries the date it was last read against its label, at the foot of the page. Pages are re-checked when the label changes, when a regulator issues a safety communication about the molecule, when a reader reports a discrepancy, and in any case on a yearly sweep of the catalogue. Prices and pack sizes are maintained separately and more often, because they move more often.

Corrections

If something here does not match the current labelling, write to [email protected] quoting the page and, if you have it, the document you are reading. What happens next is fixed: the claim is checked against the source the same way it should have been checked the first time, and if it is wrong the page is corrected or the sentence removed. A correction that changes the sense of a safety statement is noted on the page rather than made silently. If a claim cannot be supported by a label, a regulator or an identifiable study, it does not stay up while we think about it.

Suspected side effects are a different kind of report and belong in the pharmacovigilance system as well as in our inbox: medicine safety and side effects explains where to send them and what the regulators do with them.

What we do not do

• No page cites a study it has not read, and no page cites “studies show” without naming one.
• No advertising is accepted, so no manufacturer pays for placement, wording or a favourable comparison. Where two molecules are compared, the comparison follows the evidence even when it points at the cheaper pack.
• No testimonial, review or star rating is written, commissioned or published by us. Patient opinions about the clinical practice exist on independent platforms — MioDottore is the main one — where they are moderated by someone other than the person they describe.
• No page claims a licence, accreditation or membership that is not verifiable in a public register.