Brand names of Portuguese medication: understanding the importance of their linguistic structure and regulatory issues

Pires, Carla; Vigário, Marina; Cavaco, Afonso

doi:10.1590/1413-81232015208.13962014

Carla Pires

Departamento de Sócio-Farmácia, Faculdade de Farmácia, Universidade de Lisboa. Alameda da Universidade. 1649-004 Lisboa Portugal. cmbpires@gmail.com

Marina Vigário

Departamento de Linguística Geral, Faculdade de Letras, Universidade de Lisboa

Afonso Cavaco

Departamento de Sócio-Farmácia, Faculdade de Farmácia, Universidade de Lisboa. Alameda da Universidade. 1649-004 Lisboa Portugal. cmbpires@gmail.com

Collaborations

C Pires, M Vigário and A Cavaco contributed to the conception, design, development, analysis and writing-up of the manuscript.

Number of	Method	Objective(s)^a a Objectives: 1. to investigate the compliance of medicine brand names with regulations; 2. to characterize their basic linguistic features, and 3. to compare the values of their basic linguistic features with reference values for the language.	Citation(s)
1 - Orthographic words (Tokens)	FreP	1, 2, 3	(Handler et al., 2004; Infarmed, 2012; Institute for safe medication practice, 2011)¹1. Handler SM, Nace DA, Studenski SA, Fridsma DB. Medication error reporting in long-term care. Am J Geriatr Pharmacother 2004; 2(3):190-196.,²2. Infarmed. Deliberação n.º144/CD/2012 - Norma orientadora para a aceitação de nomes de medicamentos. [Resolution no. 144 /CD/2012 - Guiding norm for the acceptance of the medicines names]; 2012. [accessed 2014 July 11]. Available at: http://www.infarmed.pt/portal/page/portal/INFARMED/MEDICAMENTOS_USO_HUMANO/AUTORIZACAO_DE_INTRODUCAO_NO_MERCADO/144_DAM_91.pdf http://www.infarmed.pt/portal/page/porta... ,⁴4. Institute for safe medication practice. ISMP';s List of confused drug names; 2011. [accessed 2014 July 14]. Available at: https://www.ismp.org/tools/confuseddrug names.pdf https://www.ismp.org/tools/confuseddrugn...
2 - Letters	MS Word	2, 3	(Lambert et al., 2005)¹²12. Lambert BL, Lin SJ, Tan H. Designing safe drug names. Drug Saf 2005; 28(6):495-512.
3 - Syllables	FreP	2, 3	(Food and Drug Administration, 2010; Vigário, Martins, & Frota, 2006)⁹9. Food and Drug Administration. Guidance for industry contents of a complete submission for the evaluation of proprietary names; 2010. [accessed 2014 June 03]. Available at: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/ucm075068.pdf http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/Guida... ,²⁶26. Vigário M, Martins F, Frota S. A ferramenta FreP e a frequência de tipos silábicos e de classes de segmentos no Português. In: XXI National meeting of the Portuguese Association of Linguistics, 2006.
4 - Syllable types	FreP	2, 3	(Vigário, Martins, & Frota, 2006)²⁶26. Vigário M, Martins F, Frota S. A ferramenta FreP e a frequência de tipos silábicos e de classes de segmentos no Português. In: XXI National meeting of the Portuguese Association of Linguistics, 2006.
5 - Consonants, vowels, glides, and V-slots	FreP	2, 3	(Lambert et al., 2005; Mateus & Andrade, 2000; Vigário, Freitas, & Frota, 2006)¹²12. Lambert BL, Lin SJ, Tan H. Designing safe drug names. Drug Saf 2005; 28(6):495-512.,¹⁹19. Mateus MH, Andrade E. The Phonology of the Portuguese. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2000.,²⁷27. Vigário M, Freitas MJ, Frota S. Grammar and frequency effects in the acquisition of prosodic words in European Portuguese. Lang Speech 2006; 49(2):175-203.
6 - Words per stress position	FreP	2, 3	(Aguiar & Vigário, 2010; Food and Drug Administration, 2010; Mateus & Andrade, 2000)⁹9. Food and Drug Administration. Guidance for industry contents of a complete submission for the evaluation of proprietary names; 2010. [accessed 2014 June 03]. Available at: http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/ucm075068.pdf http://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/Guida... ,¹⁸18. Aguiar J, Vigário M. Contributo para o estudo da variação na frequência de unidades e padrões fonológicos. In: XXV National meeting of the Portuguese Association of Linguistics, 2010.,¹⁹19. Mateus MH, Andrade E. The Phonology of the Portuguese. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2000.
7 - Hyphenated words	MS Word	1, 2, 3	(Hyönä et al., 2004; Villalva, 2000)³3. Hyönä J, Bertram R, Pollatsek A. Are long compound words identified serially via their constituents? Evidence from an eye-movement-contingent display change study. Mem Cognit 2004; 32(4):523-532.,⁵5. Gonçalves C, Almeida ML. Morfologia Construcional: principais ideias, aplicação ao português e extensões necessárias. Alfa, rev. Linguíst 2014; 58(1):165-193.
8 - Words containing abbreviations (acronyms or initialims), numbers or symbols	Manual	1, 2, 3	(Mateus et al., 2004)³²32. Mateus MH, Brito AM, Duarte I, Faria IH, Frota S, Matos G, Oliveira F, Vigário M, Villalva. Gramática da Língua Portuguesa. Lisboa, Portugal: Caminho; 2004.
9 - Expressions or words not allowed according to the regulatory requirements^b b e.g. ‘rapid', ‘hiper’.	MS Word	1	(Infarmed, 2012)²2. Infarmed. Deliberação n.º144/CD/2012 - Norma orientadora para a aceitação de nomes de medicamentos. [Resolution no. 144 /CD/2012 - Guiding norm for the acceptance of the medicines names]; 2012. [accessed 2014 July 11]. Available at: http://www.infarmed.pt/portal/page/portal/INFARMED/MEDICAMENTOS_USO_HUMANO/AUTORIZACAO_DE_INTRODUCAO_NO_MERCADO/144_DAM_91.pdf http://www.infarmed.pt/portal/page/porta...

		Number of occurrences	%
Total number of syllables (more frequent + rare)		1769	100
Ten most frequent syllabics types
	CV	863	48.8
	V	147	8.3
	CVC	393	22.2
	CVGN	5	0.3
	CVN	58	3.3
	VC	36	2
	CVG	8	0.5
	VN	27	1.5
	CCV	108	6.1
	VG	4	0.2
	Total (more frequent)	1649	93.2
Rare syllable types
	VGC	1	0.1
	CCVC	34	1.9
	CCVCC	9	0.5
	CCVG	1	0.1
	CCVN	13	0.7
	CGVC	2	0.1
	CGVN	1	0.1
	CVCC	52	2.9
	CVGC	2	0.1
	VCC	1	0.1
	Other rare	4	0.2
	Total (rare)	120	6.8
Segments^a a Segments = consonants + vowels + glides. and V-slots
Consonants		2313	56.9
Vowel s		1730	42.5
Glides		23	0.6
Total		4066	100
Segments average		9
Standard Deviation		3
V-Slot^b b V-slots		39	2.2

Abbreviations included specifically in names of over-the-counters medicines	C = vitamin C
Abbreviations that might be read as acronyms	S = simethicone DM = diethylamine R = hoarseness CA = continuous ambulatory PA = pressure aerosol LA = long action
Abbreviations with full correspondence not given in Portuguese	CR = controlled-releases
	PA = pressure aerosol CPAD = continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis OD = once daily SR = slow releases LA = long action MR = muscule relaxant DC = direct current
Abbreviations with full description in the package leaflet text	CAPD = continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis M3 = mixture three B = polybacterial lysates
Names comprising numbers	‘HBO 12®’ ‘Q10®’ ‘Cerbon-6®’ ‘Debridat 200®’ ‘HUMULIN M3®’ ‘CAPD/CAPD 17®’
Names comprising symbols	‘Depot Medrol + Lidocaine®’
Names comprising prohibited expressions	‘rapid’ Forte or ‘Strong’^a a The Portuguese word in italic and the correspondent translation between quotation marks. ‘Plus’ Hiper or ‘Hyper’ a Pediátrico or ‘Pediatric’^a a The Portuguese word in italic and the correspondent translation between quotation marks. Infantil or ‘Infant’^a a The Portuguese word in italic and the correspondent translation between quotation marks. Adulto or ‘Adult’^a a The Portuguese word in italic and the correspondent translation between quotation marks. Junior or ‘Younger person’^a a The Portuguese word in italic and the correspondent translation between quotation marks.

[1] Collaborations

C Pires, M Vigário and A Cavaco contributed to the conception, design, development, analysis and writing-up of the manuscript.

Brasil

Brasil

Brand names of Portuguese medication: understanding the importance of their linguistic structure and regulatory issues

Nomes de marca dos medicamentos Portugueses: sua estrutura linguística e aspetos regulatórios

Abstract