The British Medical Journal has accused the pharmaceutical industry of creating bogus disease areas in order to sell treatments.

The respected medical journal suggests that manufacturers have 'created' a disease out of female sexual problems, spurred on by the success of Viagra, Pfizer $1.5 billion product for male erectile dysfunction.

The article calls for more public scrutiny of "the role of drug companies in the construction of new conditions, disorders and diseases" to counter the close ties of many researchers to the industry.

"Perhaps the greatest concern comes from the flip side of inflated estimates of disease prevalence the ever-narrowing definitions of 'normal' which help turn the complaints of the healthy into the conditions of the sick," the article said.

A year before the launch in 1998 of Viagra, a number of pharmaceutical companies sponsored a meeting of clinicians, researchers and pharmaceutical representatives to discuss the future direction of clinical trials for 'female sexual dysfunction'

Since then there have been six further meetings, with another one pencilled in for later this year, to agree on a definition of the condition.

Last month, Pfizer's Urology Group leader, Dr Michael Sweeney, confirmed that the company had played a passive role sponsoring a series of discussions about the disorder by providing unrestricted grants in response to requests from physicians.

Some parts of the health profession are critical of any industry involvement in disease classification and take issue with the way they see a number of symptoms being turned into a disease.

Responding to the BMJ article, George Dodds, a Consultant Psychiatrist from Falkirk, Scotland, said: "The result of uncritical medical thinking up against a pushy medical and drug industry is to disempower people and lead them to become dependent and truly ill rather than healthy."

According to the British Society for Sexual and Impotence Research the term female sexual dysfunction actually defines a wide range of symptom complexes with different causes. In response to the article the Society warned against over-medicalising sexuality.

John Dean, Secretary of the Society, said: "There is no rush to diagnose, label and prescribe, just to develop a terminology that will facilitate reliable scientific communication."

Since the launch and subsequent success of Viagra a number of pharma companies have been working on their own treatments for erectile dysfunction.

The first of these, GlaxoSmithKline and Bayer Levitra, and Eli Lilly and ICOS' Cialis, are due to be launched later this year. Both of the new drugs are expected to have reach annual sales of more than $1 billion.

pharmafocus@pharmafile.co.uk