BACKGROUND Although several mathematical models have been proposed to assess the risk:benefit of drugs in one measure, their use in practice has been rather limited. Our objective was to design a simple, easily applicable model. In this respect, measuring the proportion of patients who respond favorably to treatment without being affected by adverse drug reactions (ADR) could be a suitable endp...

Objective To develop an automated method of identifying, extracting and codifying adverse drug reaction (ADR) data contained in the Structured Product Labels (SPLs) for drugs to be studied as part of the Observational Medical Outcomes Partnership (OMOP) project. Background Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology has been used in the medical domain to identify, extract and codify data in bi...

OBJECTIVE Adverse drug reaction (ADR) can have dire consequences. However, our current understanding of the causes of drug-induced toxicity is still limited. Hence it is of paramount importance to determine molecular factors of adverse drug responses so that safer therapies can be designed. METHODS We propose a causality analysis model based on structure learning (CASTLE) for identifying fact...

Background: Outcomes in early Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) may be improved by rapidly establishing a stable and effective disease modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD) treatment regimen. We aimed to investigate whether baseline factors and initial treatment strategies are associated with changes to the first DMARD treatment, due to either Lack of Efficacy (LoE) or Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) withi...

BACKGROUND Outcomes in early Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) may be improved by rapidly establishing a stable and effective disease modifying anti-rheumatic drug (DMARD) treatment regimen. We aimed to investigate whether baseline factors and initial treatment strategies are associated with changes to the first DMARD treatment, due to either Lack of Efficacy (LoE) or Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) within...

Background Pharmacovigilance (PV) data are crucial for ensuring safety and effectiveness of medicines after drugs have been granted marketing approval. This paper describes the PV systems of India, Uganda and South Africa based on literature and Key Informant (KI) interviews and compares them with the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) minimum PV requirements for a Functional National PV Syste...

Editorial Adverse drug reaction of the month-a new series This issue of the Postgraduate Medical Journal sees the launch of a new series of articles, Adverse drug reaction of the month. The series has two objectives. First, it is intended to inform practising clinicians about significant adverse reactions (ADRs), as well as their diagnosis, management and prevention. Second, we unashamedly wish...

Background: Bullous pemphigoid (BP) is an autoimmune cutaneous blistering disorder. The precise precipitating etiology is not clear. There has been documented Drug-induced BP in case reports. Case report: We describe a case of a 44year old female with a past medical history of Psoriasis, who developed bullous pemphigoid. She had previously been on maintenance dose of 10mg intravenous methotrexa...

Female gender, advancing age, paediatric age, multiple drug usage, smoking, alcohol, inappropriate drug usage and irrational drug combination have been documented as important risk factors for adverse drug reactions (ADRs). (1-4) Women experience more adverse reactions with therapeutic drugs than men and often they are more serious than men. (5) However, there are contrary reports also which su...

Adverse drug reactions (ADR) are important information for verifying the view of patient on a particular drug. Regular user comments and reviews have been considered during data collection process to extract ADR mentions, when reported side effect after taking specific medication. In literature, most researchers focused machine learning techniques detect ADR. These methods train classification ...