A study on drug product approval by the FDA from 1930 to 2019

Abstract

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for protecting and ensuring the safety of the American public health by approving and monitoring drug products. They do so with strict supervision. This study was done to find out any correlation between drug products approved by FDA and the nature of disease. Since chronic diseases are growing in global prevalence and directly threatening the health of the world population, this study attempted to identify if the most frequently approved drug products are for the treatment of such diseases. Data was collected from the official FDA website and analyzed to find out how frequently products containing each active pharmaceutical ingredient were approved. The ATC codes for the APIs were enlisted. This was used to identify their therapeutic classes. Most of the therapeutic classes suggested that the FDA has indeed approved more drug products for the treatment of chronic diseases than acute diseases.