The drugmaker accomplished this feat by engineering a special supplement that was published along with an issue last January of The Pharmaceutical Journal, which is read by UK pharmacists. The supplement was purportedly about guidelines for statin use but was later tagged as a mere disguise for Crestor, AstraZeneca’s cholesterol fighter.

Following publication, complaints were lodged with the Medicines and Health Regulatory Agency, which decided there was no foul. But the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority, which enforces the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry’s code, determined otherwise - AstraZeneca brought the industry into disrepute, according to a new essay in the same journal.

Why? The case yielded 27 complaints, one of the highest number ever recorded for a single item. The drugmaker’s own evidence confirmed it commissioned the insert, paid the authors, paid the journal to distribute it, reviewed the insert and provided info for inclusion (albeit at the request of the authors), writes Steven Gray, a former AstraZeneca compliance officer in this month’s edition of The Pharmaceutical Journal. And so AstraZeneca couldn’t argue the insert was independently produced as far as the ABPI code is concerned.

There was never any suggestion that AstraZeneca intended to mislead or to risk patient safety, Gray writes, but the drugmaker “failed to recognise its involvement in the insert was enough to turn it from being arm’s-length sponsorship to one where the document was deemed to be promotional…The risk now is that any material that has sponsorship from a pharmaceutical company is treated with suspicion and that sponsorship from the industry is shunned.”

To read what the journal’s own editors have to say about this episode, look here.

Hat tip to PharmaGossip