BackgroundThe pharmaceutical industry invests heavily in promotion, and it uses a variety of promotional strategies to influence physicians’ prescribing decisions. Within this context, medical representatives (MRs) are the key personnel employed in promoting their products. One significant consequence of the interactions between physicians and medical representatives is a conflict of interests which may contribute to the over prescribing of medications and thus negative effects on patients’ health and economics. There is limited detailed information published on the reasons why physicians interact with pharmaceutical representatives. This study aims to qualitatively explore physicians’ attitudes about interactions with medical representatives and their reasons for accepting the medical representatives’ visits.MethodsIn-depth interviews were used to gain a better understanding of physicians’ perceptions of medical representative visits. A total of 32 physicians from both private and public hospitals were interviewed. The recordings of the interviews were transcribed verbatim and subject to thematic analysis using a framework analysis approach.ResultsThe present qualitative study found that the majority of the physicians had positive interactions with medical representatives. The physicians’ main reasons stated for allowing medical representatives’ visits are the social contacts and mutual benefits they will gain from these representatives. They also emphasized that the meeting with representatives provides educational and scientific benefits. A few physicians stated that the main reasons behind refusing the meeting with medical representatives were lack of conviction about the product and obligation to prescribe medicine from the representative company. Most of the physicians believed that they were under marketing pressure to prescribe certain medicines.ConclusionsAlthough physicians are aware that the medical representatives could influence their prescribing decision, they welcome representatives to visit them and consider receiving free samples, gifts and various kinds of support as a normal practice. The findings provided insight into possible target areas for educational interventions concerning pharmaceutical marketing. Such a finding will provide the basis for policymakers in the public and private health sector in Yemen to develop a suitable policy and regulations in terms of drug promotion.

The present study involves the integrated network pharmacology and phytoinformatics-based investigation of phytocompounds from Ocimum tenuiflorum against diabetes mellitus-linked Alzheimer’s disease. It aims to investigate the mechanism of the Ocimum tenuiflorum phytocompounds in the amelioration of diabetes mellitus-linked Alzheimer’s disease through network pharmacology, druglikeness and pharmacokinetics, molecular docking simulations, GO analysis, molecular dynamics simulations, and binding free energy analyses. A total of 14 predicted genes of the 26 orally bioactive compounds were identified. Among these 14 genes, GAPDH and AKT1 were the most significant. The network analysis revealed the AGE-RAGE signaling pathway to be a prominent pathway linked to GAPDH with 50.53% probability. Upon the molecular docking simulation with GAPDH, isoeugenol was found to possess the most significant binding affinity (−6.0 kcal/mol). The molecular dynamics simulation and binding free energy calculation results also predicted that isoeugenol forms a stable protein–ligand complex with GAPDH, where the phytocompound is predicted to chiefly use van der Waal’s binding energy (−159.277 kj/mol). On the basis of these results, it can be concluded that isoeugenol from Ocimum tenuiflorum could be taken for further in vitro and in vivo analysis, targeting GAPDH inhibition for the amelioration of diabetes mellitus-linked Alzheimer’s disease.

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Objective Interaction between physicians and medical representatives (MR) is an area of controversy, which discussed heavily in the literature. However, the perspectives of physicians on the extent and composition of pharmaceutical promotion techniques have been neglected especially in developing countries. Therefore, this study aims to bridge this gap through investigating physicians' perceptions, beliefs and attitudes towards interactions with medical representatives with special emphasis on their perception about the appropriateness of accepting drug company promotions and their either positive or negative attitudes towards drug promotion activities. Methods This is a descriptive cross‐sectional study that investigates physicians' perceptions about interactions with medical representatives. Data were collected through an anonymous survey questionnaire circulated to 610 physicians. Key findings Majority (85.3%) of participated physicians has positive attitudes towards interactions with medical representatives, and they disagree with the idea of banning medical representatives' visits. Also perception of the majority (60.8%) of physicians is that most promotional techniques do not pose ethical problem, and it is appropriate to accept most promotional items. Conclusion Majority of the physicians have positive attitudes towards interactions with MRs. Most of the physicians believe that most promotional techniques do not pose ethical problem, and it is acceptable to accept promotional items.

Medical representatives are a key component of the marketing strategies used to convince physicians to prescribe targeted drugs. The perspectives of medical representatives on the extent and composition of pharmaceutical promotion techniques has been neglected in previous studies. An in-depth interview technique was used to gain a better understanding of the current drug promotion techniques used in Yemen. The seven major themes identified, and explored, in this study of pharmaceutical promotion techniques were educational materials, free samples, symposia and other scientific meetings, invitations, gifts and incentives and commercial offers. Respondents were generally altruistic concerning the patient and were fully conscious of the unethical activities pertaining to drug promotion. They highlighted the need to observe professional ethics, enact laws and establish policies that would sanitise current practice. Free medical samples, bonuses and commissions play a large role in promoting pharmaceutical products. Governments should establish laws, ethics and policies for drug promotion.