The Medical Letter on Drugs and Therapeutics
Discipline | peer-reviewed newsletter |
---|---|
Language | English |
Publication details | |
History | first published 1959 |
Publisher | |
Standard abbreviations | |
ISO 4 | Med Lett Drugs Ther |
Indexing | |
ISSN | 1523-2859 |
Links | |
Since 1959, The Medical Letter on Drugs and Therapeutics has provided independent, unbiased critical evaluations of new drugs and sometimes older drugs when important new information becomes available. Occasionally new non-drug treatments or diagnostic aids are reviewed.
The Medical Letter is published biweekly (26 issues/year) by The Medical Letter, Inc., which also publishes Treatment Guidelines from The Medical Letter, and is available in several language versions: English (US and Canadian-adapted), French (Canadian-adapted and European), Italian and Japanese.
Editorial Process
An expert consultant or one of the editors prepares the preliminary report using both published and available unpublished studies that are carefully examined, paying special attention to the results of controlled clinical trials.
The preliminary draft is edited and sent to every member of the Advisory Board, to 10-20 other investigators who have clinical and experimental experience with the drug or type of drug or disease under review, to the FDA and CDC, to the first authors of all the articles cited in the text, to appropriate representatives of the pharmaceutical companies making the drugs under review, and often to companies that make competitor drugs as well.
Many critical observations, suggestions and questions are received from the reviewers and are incorporated into the article during the revision process, and the article is checked and edited to make sure the final appraisal is not only accurate, but also easy to read.
flowchart of the editorial process