KUALA LUMPUR, March 3 — The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) will make medicine more expensive in signatory nations including Malaysia, according to a study by the University of New South Wales.

In the study conducted on leaked chapters on the TPPA by the university’s Centre for Health Equity Training Research and Evaluation, it was found that the trade deal would allow pharmaceutical companies to perpetually renew drug patents and prevent generic competition.

The study, which was reported by Australian news site The Age, also said the US was seeking to prevent generic manufacturers from using drug companies’ clinical trial data for marketing approval. It said the US is seeking eight years of protection for their data, and 12 years for so-called biologic drugs and vaccines.

Such provisions would discourage competition from generic manufacturers and allow drug companies to price their drugs higher.

According to the study, the TPPA would also outlaw therapeutic reference pricing, a mechanism that helps to ensure that the prices paid for medicines reflects their clinical benefits.

In addition, the report said that proposed investor-state dispute settlement procedures would make it difficult for governments to legislate in ways that harmed tobacco, alcohol, or food manufacturers.

The study took 15 months to complete and was carried out by five health specialists from New South Wales, Sydney, and La Trobe universities. It relied on information provided by texts of draft chapters leaked on WikiLeaks.

The article by The Age also said that the Centre’s health impact statement followed Commonwealth guidelines and was “an accepted procedure for establishing the impact of new proposals on health.”

The details of the TPPA will not be made public until a meeting of the relevant trade ministers in Hawaii next month.

The concerns voiced in the study reflect sentiments expressed by local opponents of the TPPA.

Last October, DAP’s Klang MP Charles Santiago said its provisions could make medicines unaffordable to average Malaysians.

The intellectual property chapter of the TPPA was previously leaked by WikiLeaks in November 2013, prompting critics to believe their fears of the trade deal’s effects on consumers and sovereign rights were justified.

The TPPA is a free trade agreement that has been negotiated by the US, Malaysia and nine other nations as part of the larger Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership since 2010.