Dataset Information

Co-Prescription of QT-Interval Prolonging Drugs: An Analysis in a Large Cohort of Geriatric Patients.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Drug-induced QT-interval prolongation is associated with occurrence of potentially fatal Torsades de Pointes arrhythmias (TdP). So far, data regarding the overall burden of QT-interval prolonging drugs (QT-drugs) in geriatric patients are limited.

Objective

This study was performed to assess the individual burden of QT-interval prolonging drugs (QT-drugs) in geriatric polymedicated patients and to identify the most frequent and risky combinations of QT-drugs.

Methods

In the discharge medication of geriatric patients between July 2009 and June 2013 from the Geriatrics in Bavaria-Database (GiB-DAT) (co)-prescriptions of QT-drugs were investigated. QT-drugs were classified according to a publicly available reference site (CredibleMeds®) as ALL-QT-drugs (associated with any QT-risk) or High-risk-QT-drugs (corresponding to QT-drugs with known risk of Torsades de Pointes according to CredibleMeds®) and in addition as SmPC-high-risk-QT-drugs (according to the German prescribing information (SmPC) contraindicated co-prescription with other QT-drugs).

Results

Of a cohort of 130,434 geriatric patients (mean age 81 years, 67% women), prescribed a median of 8 drugs, 76,594 patients (58.7%) received at least one ALL-QT-drug. Co-prescriptions of two or more ALL-QT-drugs were observed in 28,768 (22.1%) patients. Particularly risky co-prescriptions of High-risk-QT-drugs or SmPC-high-risk-QT-drugs with at least on further QT-drug occurred in 55.9% (N = 12,633) and 54.2% (N = 12,429) of these patients, respectively. Consideration of SmPCs (SmPC-high-risk-QT-drugs) allowed the identification of an additional 15% (N = 3,999) patients taking a risky combination that was not covered by the commonly used CredibleMeds® classification. Only 20 drug-drug combinations accounted for more than 90% of these potentially most dangerous co-prescriptions.

Conclusion

In a geriatric study population co-prescriptions of two and more QT-drugs were common. A considerable proportion of QT-drugs with higher risk only could be detected by using more than one classification-system. Local adaption of international classifications can improve identification of patients at risk.

SUBMITTER: Schachtele S

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4871413 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Co-Prescription of QT-Interval Prolonging Drugs: An Analysis in a Large Cohort of Geriatric Patients.

Schächtele Simone S Tümena Thomas T Gaßmann Karl-Günter KG Fromm Martin F MF Maas Renke R

PloS one 20160518 5

<h4>Background</h4>Drug-induced QT-interval prolongation is associated with occurrence of potentially fatal Torsades de Pointes arrhythmias (TdP). So far, data regarding the overall burden of QT-interval prolonging drugs (QT-drugs) in geriatric patients are limited.<h4>Objective</h4>This study was performed to assess the individual burden of QT-interval prolonging drugs (QT-drugs) in geriatric polymedicated patients and to identify the most frequent and risky combinations of QT-drugs.<h4>Methods ...[more]

PMID: 27192430

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Project description:Pharmaceutical prescribing and drug-drug interaction data underlie recommendations on drug combinations that should be avoided or closely monitored by prescribers. Because the number of patients taking multiple medications is increasing, a comprehensive view of prescribing patterns in patients is important to better assess real world pharmaceutical response and evaluate the potential for multi-drug interactions. We obtained self-reported prescription data from NHANES surveys between 1999 and 2010, and confirm the previously reported finding of increasing drug use in the elderly. We studied co-prescription drug trends by focusing on the 2009-2010 survey, which contains prescription data on 690 drugs used by 10,537 subjects. We found that medication profiles were unique for individuals aged 65 years or more, with ≥98 unique drug regimens encountered per 100 subjects taking 3 or more medications. When drugs were viewed by therapeutic class, it was found that the most commonly prescribed drugs were not the most commonly co-prescribed drugs for any of the 16 drug classes investigated. We cross-referenced these medication lists with drug interaction data from Drugs.com to evaluate the potential for drug interactions. The number of drug alerts rose proportionally with the number of co-prescribed medications, rising from 3.3 alerts for individuals prescribed 5 medications to 11.7 alerts for individuals prescribed 10 medications. We found 22% of elderly subjects taking both a substrate and inhibitor of a given cytochrome P450 enzyme, and 4% taking multiple inhibitors of the same enzyme simultaneously. By examining drug pairs prescribed in 0.1% of the population or more, we found low agreement between co-prescription rate and co-discussion in the literature. These data show that prescribing trends in treatment could drive a large extent of individual variability in drug response, and that current pairwise approaches to assessing drug-drug interactions may be inadequate for predicting real world outcomes.

Project description:Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have suggested that sequence variation in cis-regulatory elements (CREs) modulate common disease risk and trait variation. However, identification of the majority of these causal variants and their mechanism of action have remained significant challenges. We used reporter assays for all common variants at the QT interval associated SCN5A GWAS locus with the goal of identifying causal variants for the association. A target region of ~500kb containing SCN5A was defined based on recombination hotspots (rate>10cM/Mb; estimated from HapMap) flanking the 5 independent QT interval GWAS hits. Within this region, all common variants (minor allele frequency >5%), from the 1000 Genomes European ancestry populations, in moderate linkage disequilibrium (LD; r2>0.3) with any of the 5 sentinel hits, were selected for analyses. Of a total 121 variants selected, 112 variants in 104 amplicons passed primer design (amplicon size 256-617bp; median 397bp), with both alleles of 106 variants successfully cloned along with flanking sequences into 98 amplicons upstream of a minimal promoter-driven firefly luciferase gene in pGL4.23. Cardiomyocyte cells, AC16 (human) and HL1 (mouse), were transfected with test constructs and Renilla luciferase vector (for transfection normalization) in triplicate; luciferase assays were performed 24h later. All cloning and reporter assays were performed in 96- and 24-well plates. In reporter assays across the two cell lines, compared to empty vector, 37 amplicons showed enhancer activity (z-score>99 %tile), with a concordance rate of ~70%. Of these 37 enhancer CREs, 9 overlapped open chromatin regions (DNase-seq peaks) observed in adult human heart tissue, largest among all human tissues evaluated by the RoadMap Epigenomics project. Of these 37 enhancer CREs, 12 showed allelic difference in reporter activity (P<0.05), thus identifying at least one enhancer CRE variant in high-to-moderate LD with each of the 5 sentinel hits. Using GTEx heart left ventricle (n=190) gene expression data, we showed correlation between SCN5A expression and the number of QT interval prolonging alleles across the 5 index SNPs. We are currently assessing the binding of cardiac nuclear factors at the 12 enhancer CRE variants by gel-shift assays and the effect of CRISPR-Cas9 mediated CRE deletion on SCN5A expression in AC16 and HL1 cells, an analyses helped by evaluation of AC16 and HL1 cells by RNA-seq, ATAC-seq and karyotyping. Thus, independent of the publicly available epigenomic data, which are of limited cell-type relevance, an unbiased in vitro reporter screen for CREs overlapping all common variants associated with QT interval at the SCN5A GWAS locus identified 12 common cis-regulatory variants that map to cardiac open chromatin regions and correlate with SCN5A cardiac expression.

Dataset Information

Co-Prescription of QT-Interval Prolonging Drugs: An Analysis in a Large Cohort of Geriatric Patients.

Background

Objective

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Publications

Co-Prescription of QT-Interval Prolonging Drugs: An Analysis in a Large Cohort of Geriatric Patients.

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