The Swiss voice in the world since 1935

Over half of medicines in pharmacy windows are ineffective, study finds

Swiss pharmacy
Pharmacies are not allowed to display prescription drugs in their windows. © Keystone / Gaetan Bally

Nearly 60% of medicines displayed in pharmacy windows in Switzerland have no medically proven efficacy, a study has found.

The study, conducted by a team of doctors at Biel Hospital Centre and published on Monday, analysed photos of shop windows from 68 randomly selected pharmacies in Switzerland. The team found that of the 970 medicines examined, only 418 (or 43.1%) had proven efficacy.

The data on the remaining 556 medicines (or 56.9%) are too thin to draw any reliable conclusions about their effectiveness.

These results can be explained in part by the fact that pharmacies are not allowed to advertise prescription medicines like antibiotics in their windows, notes the study published in the British Medical Journal Open.

“Most of them are homeopathic medicines that have never proved effective in any study. So you can drink gallons of them and you’ll probably have neither primary effects nor side effects,” explained Professor Daniel Genné, who directed the study.

But he told Swiss public broadcaster RTS that this proportion is still problematic. “These are still surprising results, which could also have consequences for patients,” he said.

While the drugs on display are not dangerous to health, Genné points out that they are sold to people with symptoms. “It could just be anxiety, but it could also be a serious illness for which effective treatment needs to be given. So it could delay a diagnosis.”

Genné’s team regrets the presence of so many drugs with no proven efficacy in shop windows. By giving them this visibility, pharmacies are indirectly recommending them to the public, who are increasingly resorting to self-medication. However, some patients are unaware that non-prescription drugs can interact with other medicines.

The researchers are therefore proposing to introduce a label on all non-prescription medicines indicating their level of efficacy, “just as electrical appliances have been classified from A to F according to their level of energy efficiency”. This would enable patients to make informed decisions about the medicines they choose to buy.

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here. 

External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
Daily news

Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox.

Daily

The SBC Privacy Policy provides additional information on how your data is processed.


Popular Stories

Most Discussed

News

Zurich city lake crossing to take place on 2 July

More

Swim across Lake Zurich to take place on July 2

This content was published on This year's Zurich city lake crossing is planned for 2 July. Should the weather not play ball or the water be too cold, two alternative dates are planned.

Read more: Swim across Lake Zurich to take place on July 2
Women's pay report: large companies disregard equal pay

More

June 14 women’s strike: no equality without pay rises for women

This content was published on At the presentation of the Women's Wages Report, the trade union Unia denounced large companies. These would ignore the Gender Equality Act. At the same time, bourgeois parties wanted to weaken or abolish the wage analyses.

Read more: June 14 women’s strike: no equality without pay rises for women
Environmentalists find microplastics in faeces of Swiss wild animals

More

Microplastics found in faeces of Swiss wild animals

This content was published on Swiss environmentalists and scientists have found microplastics in the faeces of roe deer, deer, wild boar, hares, chamois, foxes, martens, badgers and wolves.

Read more: Microplastics found in faeces of Swiss wild animals

In compliance with the JTI standards

More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative

You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!

If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR

SWI swissinfo.ch - a branch of Swiss Broadcasting Corporation SRG SSR