138EVALUATION OF RATIONALITY OF DRUG PROMOTIONAL LITERATURE IN A TERTIARY CARE HOSPITAL IN SOUTH INDIAPharmaceutical advertisements are one of the important methods of spreading the information about drugs to the concerned Physician. Misleading drug advertising encourages drug consumerism rather than rational use of drugs. To add to the problem, developing countries lack a strong system to keep a check on such activities. As there are few studies conducted in this region on rationality of drug promotional literature, the present study was carried out to evaluate the rationality of drug promotional literature. This was a cross sectional, observational study conducted in the department of Internal Medicine at tertiary care hospital in South India, from November 2014 to April 2015. A total of 132 advertisements were collected and tested against WHO criteria for ethical medicinal drug promotion. International non-proprietary names (INN) or the approved generic name of the drug was mentioned in most of advertisements (96%). The active ingredient was mentioned in 88.6% of the promotional materials and other ingredients causing adverse events was mentioned in 11%. Side effects, precautions, contraindications and drug interactions were mentioned in <30% of the promotional materials. The brand name was mentioned in all the promotional literature (100%). In this study, it is found that only 24.4% claims were supported by references. Most common reference used was journal articles and most common type of journal article was original article. Some promotional materials used case reports and editorial as the reference. Promotional materials does not follow the WHO’s Ethical Criteria for Medicinal Drug Promotion. Physicians should not totally rely on these advertisements for prescribing information and other parallel sources should also be used.tegn@rediffmail.comResearch612016Drug promotional literature,Pharmaceutical promotion,WHO criteria,Brief prescription informationHooli tanuja V,SrikanthDepartment of Pharmacology, ESIC Medical College, Gulbarga, 585106, Karnataka, India.,Department of Pharmacology, ESIC Medical College, Gulbarga, 585106, Karnataka, India.