Drug safety
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Following the start of the World Health Organization (WHO) Programme for International Drug Monitoring (PIDM) by 10 member countries in 1968, it took another 24 years for the first two African countries to join in 1992, by which time the number of member countries in the PIDM had grown to 33. Whilst pharmacovigilance (PV), including the submission of individual case safety reports (ICSR) to VigiBase(®), the WHO global ICSR database, is growing in Africa, no data have been published on the growth of ICSR reporting from Africa and how the features of ICSRs from Africa compare with the rest of the world (RoW). ⋯ As at the end of September 2015, 35 of 54 African countries were Full Member countries of the PIDM. Although the number of ICSRs from Africa has increased substantially, ICSRs from Africa still make up <1 % of the global total in VigiBase(®). The features of ICSRs from Africa differ to those from the RoW in relation to the classes of products as well as age group of patients affected. The gender of patients represented in these ICSRs are identical.
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Medication-related problems can cause serious adverse drug events (ADEs) that may lead to hospitalization of the patient. There are multiple screening methods to detect and reduce potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) and potential prescribing omissions (PPOs). Whether this will result in less medication-related hospitalizations is unknown. The study objective was to assess the risk of preventable medication-related hospital admissions associated with potentially inappropriate prescribing, using the Beers 2012 and the Screening Tool of Older Person's Prescriptions and the Screening Tool to Alert doctors to Right Treatment (STOPP & START) 2008 criteria. ⋯ Our study shows that patients with potentially inappropriate prescribing detected with the STOPP & START 2008 criteria are at risk of preventable medication-related hospital admissions. The STOPP & START 2008 criteria can be used to identify older people at risk of medication-related problems.
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Spontaneous reporting systems (SRSs) are pivotal for signal detection, especially for rare events with a high drug-attributable component, such as torsade de pointes (TdP). Use of different national SRSs is rarely attempted because of inherent difficulties, but should be considered on the assumption that rare events are diluted in international databases. ⋯ We found differences across and within national SRSs in the reporting of drug-induced TdP, which finally resulted in five potential new signals of torsadogenicity. These findings warrant targeted pharmacovigilance studies to formally assess the existence of actual drug-event associations.
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Previous observational studies have associated benzodiazepine use with an increased risk of dementia. However, limitations in the study methods leave questions unanswered regarding the interpretation of the findings. ⋯ After taking a prodromal phase into consideration, benzodiazepine use was not associated with an increased risk of developing AD or VaD.
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There is growing interest in whether social media can capture patient-generated information relevant for medicines safety surveillance that cannot be found in traditional sources. ⋯ Publicly available data from the considered social media networks were sparse and largely untrackable for the purpose of providing early clues of safety concerns regarding the prespecified case studies. Further research investigating other case studies and exploring other social media platforms are necessary to further characterise the usefulness of social media for safety surveillance.