A court in Australia has ordered drug giant company Reckitt Benckiser to stop selling some of its popular Nurofen painkiller brands after finding tablets marketed for specific complaints such as back pain or migraines contained exactly the same active ingredient.
Ruling on complaints made by the fair trading regulator, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the court found all the products contained the same amount of the active ingredient: 342 milligrams of ibuprofen lysine.
The Federal Court in Sydney ruled that the Nurofen Back Pain, Period Pain, Migraine Pain and Tension Headache products were, in fact, identical and that Reckitt Benckiser had “engaged in misleading conduct” by labelling them for different ailments.
And on its website www.nurofen.com.au (link is external), each product was formulated to treat a particular type of pain (solely or specifically treated a particular type of pain).
The Medicines and Healthcare Regulatory Products Agency (MHRA) which policies pharmaceutical marketing on product packaging said it was aware of the Australian ruling but had not received a complaint about Nurofen products in the UK.
The company has been ordered to remove the products from the shelves within three months, and to publish corrective notices to inform consumers of the findings.
The company’s Australian website has already been changed. A section describing the four types of pill connected to the case describes them as “for general pain” and says: “Any of the four products shown on this page have the same ingredient and can be taken to provide effective temporary relief of pain and/or inflammation associated with either a migraine, tension headache, back pain or period pain.”
The Ibuprofen (trade name: Advil, Brufen, Motrin, Nurofen, and others) is a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used for relieving pain, helping with fever, and reducing inflammation.
RELIEVES:
HEADACHE
TENSION HEADACHE
MIGRAINE HEADACHE
BACK PAIN
LOWER BACK PAIN
PERIOD PAIN
DENTAL PAIN
MUSCULAR AND RHEUMATIC PAIN
COLD AND FLU PAIN
ARTHRITIC PAIN
BODY ACHES AND PAINS
STRAINS AND SPORTS INJURIES
INFLAMMATION
FEVER
