The researchers focused on targeted therapies for two therapeutic areas: metastatic renal cell carcinoma (RCC), including sorafenib, sunitinib, and pazopanib; and chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), including imatinib, dasatinib, and nilotinib.
They limited their analysis to physicians listed as oncologists who filled at least 20 prescriptions for each of the three drugs in metastatic RCC (n = 354) or in CML (n = 2,225).
Receiving payments categorized as “general,” such as gifts, speaker fees, meals, and travel, increased the odds of prescribing drugs for both metastatic RCC (odds ratio, 2.05; 95% confidence interval, 1.34-3.14; P = .001) and for CML (odds ratio, 1.29; 95% CI, 1.13-1.47; P less than .001).
By contrast, research payments did not increase the odds of prescribing those drugs, the investigators reported.