Generics no less effective than brands in cardiovascular disease, says JAMA study

Generic drugs used to treat cardiovascular disease are just as effective as brand-name medications, according to a report by researchers at Harvard Medical School, that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Researchers found that, in clinical studies, copy-drugs were no less effective in treating cardiovascular illness than original products, despite also finding a number of articles discouraging their use.

The meta-analysis, titled Clinical Equivalence of Generic and Brand-Name Drugs Used in Cardiovascular Disease, looked both at trials comparing branded heart drugs with their generic alternatives and pharmaceutical editorials addressing copy-cat substitution from peer-reviewed publications, in MEDLINE, EMBASE and International Pharmaceutical Abstracts from January 1984 to August 2008.