Doctors in the USA tend to prescribe the dearer drugs for hypertension rather than the ones that are recommended under medical guidelines. Consumers are paying about $1 billion more than they have to each year because of this, say researchers. And that figure is just for high blood pressure drugs.

Although they are not sure, the researchers wondered whether this may be due to the advertising that is targeted at dcotors by the pharmaceutical industry.

In this study, they looked at Pennsylvania's drug-assistance program, more than 133,000 who received over 2 million prescriptions for high blood pressure in 2001. The bill for the state came to $48.5 million.

Forty per cent of the prescriptions were for more expensive drugs than those indicated under the medical guidelines.

You can read this study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

Had all the doctors prescribed the drugs indicated under the guidelines the state of Pennsylvania would have saved $11.6 million.

According to the researchers, savings nationally of $1.2 billion could be made just on hypertension drug prescriptions.

Dr. Michael Fischer and Dr. Jerry Avorn, Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital, carried out the study.

Fischer, when referring to the drug industry's advertising to doctors, said, "I think it's a really important area for further study. There's advertising both to consumers and physicians."

Some people say that patients often ask for the most expensive drugs. Maybe because they believe it to be the best, or perhaps because they have been watching the adverts (in the USA it is legal to advertise prescription drugs to the general public. In many countries, most of Europe, it is not).