According to a new study, a little over 70 percent of prescription drugs advertised on television were rated as having "low therapeutic value," meaning they offer little benefit compared with drugs already on the market."One explanation might be that drugs with substantial therapeutic value are likely to be recognized and prescribed without advertising, so manufacturers have greater incentive to promote drugs of lesser value," said the authors, which include researchers at Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth.Benefit not addedFor the new study, researchers led by Aaron Kesselheim, who leads Harvard's Program On Regulation, Therapeutics, And Law (PORTAL), looked at monthly lists of the top-advertised drugs on TV in the US between 2015 and 2021.The top three low-benefit drugs by dollar amount were Dulaglutide (type 2 diabetes), Varenicline (smoking cessation), and Tofacitinib (rheumatoid arthritis)."Policy makers and regulators could consider limiting direct-to-consumer advertising to drugs with high therapeutic or public health value or requiring standardized disclosure of comparative effectiveness and safety data," Kesselheim and his colleagues concluded, "but policy changes would likely require industry cooperation or face constitutional challenge.""