By Rebecca Jenkins
Wikipedia may be one of the first hits to come up in a Google search, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good source of drug information, researchers say. The popular site, which is edited by Internet users, contained no factual errors, but many errors by omission, a study found.
Researchers catalogued 48 omissions in Wikipedia compared with 12 in a US medical database.
“The fact that pharmaceutical companies have been caught deleting negative information on user-edited sites attests to the significant commercial interests at stake and the risk of relying on these resources where such a conflict of interest arises,” they wrote.
Using various questions, such as: “What is the incidence of cough with a particular angiotensin II receptor blocker?” they found Wikipedia answered 40% and the database 82.5%.
The primary concern was when Wikipedia was a patient’s sole source of information, the authors said.
“It can also be problematic if it is consulted to help direct their self-medication without keeping their doctor in the loop,” the lead author said.
“This problem is exacerbated when a patient is obtaining prescription medications via rogue Internet pharmacies.”
Wikipedia performed poorly with information on drug dosing, scoring zero compared with 90% for the database, the study found.
However, there were four factual errors found in the database, but none in the Wikipedia information.
Annals of Pharmacotherapy 2008; in press.
Reproduced with permission from Australian Doctor, 5 December 2008