These are the studies that are supposed to give us a truer picture of a
drug's safety once a large population is using it.

Susan

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=1684277

"WASHINGTON Mar 3, 2006 (AP)— Drug companies have yet to even begin
nearly two in three of the follow-up studies they agreed to undertake
once their medicines were on the market, according to a government tally
released Friday.

Often the drugs received expedited approval from federal regulators on
condition that the studies be carried out.

The Food and Drug Administration said in an annual report that, as of
Sept. 30, 65 percent of the 1,231 so-called "post-marketing" drug
studies that companies had pledged to carry out were still pending. "

Susan