Analysis of two cases of irregular medicine sales on internet

The electronic commerce of medicines brings the harms related to the absence of a health professional mediating the process. In cases of irregular or illegal medicine sales, this problem becomes more severe, since there is no way to guarantee the quality of the product. The objective of this study was to describe the information found on internet sites, in Portuguese language, which offered two medicines whose commerce is considered irregular in Brazil: Pramil (sildenafil citrate) and Cytotec (misoprostol). The study followed a cross-sectional design, and the internet search was performed, for each one of the medicines, in one specific day. The selection of the websites was made through the use of the Google web search engine, and the data from the first 30 advertisements were collected and analyzed. The search was performed using the keywords “Pramil” and “Cytotec”. For Pramil, 70.0% of the advertisements were hosted on Brazilian websites, and for Cytotec, there was a balance between Brazilian (53.3%) and foreigner websites (46.7%). Classified websites were the most frequent type for Pramil (63.3%) and Cytotec (86.7%). The most frequent way of contact for Pramil vendors was e-mail (66.7%) and “contact us” forms for Cytotec (76.7%). For both medicines, the majority of the advertisements did not show any information on indication or adverse effects. Cytotec’s advertisements showed a higher proportion of withdrawal (23.3%) than Pramil’s (10.0%). This study showed how easy it is to buy irregular medicines on internet. Thus, public health interventions are important and required, including health education about the harms of irregular e-commerce of medicines.