Drug safety
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Early prediction and accurate characterization of risk for serious liver injury associated with newly marketed drugs remains an important challenge for clinicians, the pharmaceutical industry, and regulators. To date, a biomarker that specifically indicates exposure to a drug as the etiologic cause of liver injury has not been identified. ⋯ The FAERS database can be used to advance empiric hepatotoxicity time-trending reporting levels for newly marketed agents in order to rapidly identify recently launched potential hepatotoxic agents and initiate further evaluation.
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The Patient-Reported Outcomes Safety Event Reporting (PROSPER) Consortium was convened to improve safety reporting by better incorporating the perspective of the patient. PROSPER comprises industry, regulatory authority, academic, private sector and patient representatives who are interested in the area of patient-reported outcomes of adverse events (PRO-AEs). It has developed guidance on PRO-AE data, including the benefits of wider use and approaches for data capture and analysis. ⋯ The members of the PROSPER Consortium therefore direct this PRO-AE guidance to multiple stakeholders in drug safety, including industry, regulators, prescribers and patients. The use of this document across the entirety of the drug development life cycle will help to better define the benefit-risk profile of new and existing medicines. Because of the clinical relevance of 'real-world' data, PROs have the potential to contribute important new knowledge about the benefits and risks of medicinal products, communicated through the voice of the patient.
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There are insufficient data on the safety in early pregnancy of the artemisinins, a new class of antimalarials. Assessment of drug teratogenicity requires large sample sizes for an adequate risk-benefit assessment. There is currently limited pharmacovigilance infrastructure in malaria-endemic countries. Monitoring drug safety in early pregnancy is especially challenging, as it requires early pregnancy detection to assess any potential increased risk of miscarriage, prospective follow-up to reduce recall and survival biases, and accurate data on gestational age assessment. Record linkage approaches for pregnancy pharmacovigilance using routinely generated health records could be a pragmatic and cost-effective approach for pharmacovigilance in early pregnancy, but has not been evaluated in resource-poor settings. ⋯ Probabilistic record linkage is a potentially cost-effective method to assess the safety of antimalarials in early pregnancy in resource-constrained settings to assess increased risk of overall birth defects, and stillbirths in settings with good existing health records and well defined target populations.
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Multicenter Study
The PREGVAXGRIP study: a cohort study to assess foetal and neonatal consequences of in utero exposure to vaccination against A(H1N1)v2009 influenza.
In October 2009, in the context of an A(H1N1)v2009 influenza pandemic, a vaccination campaign was launched in France, in which one of the priority groups was pregnant women, on account of the high risk of developing complications following infection by this virus. ⋯ This study suggests that exposure to the A(H1N1)v2009 pandemic influenza vaccine during pregnancy does not increase the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes. However, because of the relatively small number of women exposed during the first trimester, other studies are needed to exclude an increased risk of malformation.
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Perinatal health outcomes other than major congenital anomalies in offspring of women with epilepsy (WWE) have not been widely studied, and results of previous studies are conflicting and are mostly based on small numbers. Antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) pass through the placenta and may affect neonatal outcome. ⋯ Offspring of WWE have a slightly increased risk for adverse pregnancy-related and perinatal health outcomes when compared with WOE, and AED exposure further increases the risk. The results should be interpreted with caution, as information on type of epilepsy was unavailable.