Dataset Information

Sex Differences in Reported Adverse Drug Reactions to COVID-19 Drugs in a Global Database of Individual Case Safety Reports.

ABSTRACT: INTRODUCTION:In late 2019, a new coronavirus-severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-was discovered in Wuhan, China, and the World Health Organization later declared coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) a pandemic. Numerous drugs have been repurposed and investigated for therapeutic effectiveness in the disease, including those from "Solidarity," an international clinical trial (azithromycin, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, the fixed combination lopinavir/ritonavir, and remdesivir). OBJECTIVE:Our objective was to evaluate adverse drug reaction (ADR) reporting for drugs when used in the treatment of COVID-19 compared with use for other indications, specifically focussing on sex differences. METHOD:We extracted reports on COVID-19-specific treatments from the global ADR database, VigiBase, using an algorithm developed to identify reports that listed COVID-19 as the indication. The Solidarity trial drugs were included, as were any drugs reported???100 times. We performed a descriptive comparison of reports for the same drugs used in non-COVID-19 indications. The data lock point date was 7 June 2020. RESULTS:In total, 2573 reports were identified for drugs used in the treatment of COVID-19. In order of frequency, the most reported ADRs were electrocardiogram QT-prolonged, diarrhoea, nausea, hepatitis, and vomiting in males and diarrhoea, electrocardiogram QT-prolonged, nausea, vomiting, and upper abdominal pain in females. Other hepatic and kidney-related events were included in the top ten ADRs in males, whereas no hepatic or renal terms were reported for females. COVID-19-related reporting patterns differed from non-pandemic reporting for these drugs. CONCLUSION:Review of a global database of suspected ADR reports revealed sex differences in the reporting patterns for drugs used in the treatment of COVID-19. Patterns of ADR sex differences need further elucidation.

SUBMITTER: Zekarias A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7518652 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Sex Differences in Reported Adverse Drug Reactions to COVID-19 Drugs in a Global Database of Individual Case Safety Reports.

Zekarias Alem A Watson Sarah S Vidlin Sara Hedfors SH Grundmark Birgitta B

Drug safety 20200925 12

<h4>Introduction</h4>In late 2019, a new coronavirus-severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)-was discovered in Wuhan, China, and the World Health Organization later declared coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) a pandemic. Numerous drugs have been repurposed and investigated for therapeutic effectiveness in the disease, including those from "Solidarity," an international clinical trial (azithromycin, chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, the fixed combination lopinavir/ritonavir, ...[more]

PMID: 32978702

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundAdverse drug reactions (ADRs) in the pediatric population may differ in types and frequencies compared to other populations. Respective studies analyzing ADR reports referring to children have already been performed for certain countries. However, differences in drug prescriptions, among others, complicate the transferability of the results from other countries to Germany or were rarely considered. Hence, the first aim of our study was to analyze the drugs and ADRs reported most frequently in ADR reports from Germany referring to children contained in the European ADR database (EudraVigilance). The second aim was to set the number of ADR reports in relation to the number of drug prescriptions. These were provided by the Research Institute for Ambulatory Health Care in Germany.MethodsFor patients aged 0-17 years 20,854 spontaneous ADR reports were received between 01/01/2000-28/2/2019. The drugs and ADRs reported most frequently were identified. Stratified analyses with regard to age, sex and drugs used "off-label" were performed. Reporting rates (number of ADR reports/number of drug prescriptions) were calculated.ResultsMethylphenidate (5.5%), ibuprofen (2.3%), and palivizumab (2.0%) were most frequently reported as suspected. If related to the number of drug prescriptions, the ranking changed (palivizumab, methylphenidate, ibuprofen). Irrespective of the applied drugs, vomiting (5.4%), urticaria (4.6%) and dyspnea (4.2%) were the ADRs reported most frequently. For children aged 0-1 year, drugs for the treatment of nervous system disorders and foetal exposure during pregnancy were most commonly reported. In contrast, methylphenidate ranked first in children older than 6 years and referred 3.5 times more often to males compared to females. If age- and sex-specific exposure was considered, more ADR reports for methylphenidate referred to children 4-6 years and females 13-17 years. Drugs for the treatment of nervous system disorders ranked first among "off-label" ADR reports.ConclusionsOur analysis underlines the importance of putting the number of ADR reports of a drug in context with its prescriptions. Additionally, differences in age- and sex-stratified analysis were observed which may be associated with age- and sex-specific diseases and, thus, drug exposure. The drugs most frequently included in "off-label" ADR reports differed from those most often used according to literature.

Project description:BackgroundWomen experience adverse drug reactions, ADRs, nearly twice as often as men, yet the role of sex as a biological factor in the generation of ADRs is poorly understood. Most drugs currently in use were approved based on clinical trials conducted on men, so women may be overmedicated. We determined whether sex differences in drug pharmacokinetics, PKs, predict sex differences in ADRs.MethodsSearches of the ISI Web of Science and PubMed databases were conducted with combinations of the terms: drugs, sex or gender, pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics, drug safety, drug dose, and adverse drug reaction, which yielded over 5000 articles with considerable overlap. We obtained information from each relevant article on significant sex differences in PK measures, predominantly area under the curve, peak/maximum concentrations, and clearance/elimination rates. ADRs were identified from every relevant article and recorded categorically as female-biased, male-biased, or not sex-biased.ResultsFor most of the FDA-approved drugs examined, elevated blood concentrations and longer elimination times were manifested by women, and these PKs were strongly linked to sex differences in ADRs. Of the 86 drugs evaluated, 76 had higher PK values in women; for 59 drugs with clinically identifiable ADRs, sex-biased PKs predicted the direction of sex-biased ADRs in 88% of cases. Ninety-six percent of drugs with female-biased PK values were associated with a higher incidence of ADRs in women than men, but only 29% of male-biased PKs predicted male-biased ADRs. Accessible PK information is available for only a small fraction of all drugs CONCLUSIONS: Sex differences in pharmacokinetics strongly predict sex-specific ADRs for women but not men. This sex difference was not explained by sex differences in body weight. The absence of sex-stratified PK information in public records for hundreds of drugs raises the concern that sex differences in PK values are widespread and of clinical significance. The common practice of prescribing equal drug doses to women and men neglects sex differences in pharmacokinetics and dimorphisms in body weight, risks overmedication of women, and contributes to female-biased adverse drug reactions. We recommend evidence-based dose reductions for women to counteract this sex bias.

Project description:IntroductionAdverse event reporting patterns vary between countries, reflecting differences in reporting culture, clinical practice and underlying patient populations. Japan collects about 60,000 domestic adverse event reports yearly and shares serious reports with the World Health Organization (WHO) Programme for International Drug Monitoring in VigiBase, the WHO global database of individual case safety reports. Understanding these reports in the global context can be helpful for regulators worldwide and can aid hypothesis-generation for Japanese-specific vulnerabilities to adverse drug reactions.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to explore differences in the reporting of adverse events between Japan and other countries.MethodsvigiPoint is a method for data-driven exploration in pharmacovigilance. It outlines data subsets, pinpoints key features and facilitates expert review, using odds ratios subjected to statistical shrinkage to distinguish one data subset from another. Here, we compared 260,000 Japanese reports in E2B format classified as serious and received in VigiBase between 2013 and 2018 with 2.5 million reports from the rest of the world (of which 51% are from the USA). Reporting patterns for which the 99% credibility interval of the shrunk log-odds ratios were above 0.5 or below - 0.5 were flagged as key features. The shrinkage was set to the vigiPoint default corresponding to 1% of the size of the Japanese data subset. As a sensitivity analysis, additional vigiPoint comparisons were performed between Japan and, in turn, Africa, the Americas, the Americas except the USA and Canada, Asia and Europe.ResultsThere were higher reporting rates in Japan from physicians (83% vs. 39%) and pharmacists (17% vs. 10%). It was also more common to see reports with more than five drugs per report (22% vs. 14%) and with a single adverse event (72% vs. 45%). More than half of the Japanese reports had a vigiGrade completeness score above 0.8 compared with about one in five from the rest of the world. There were more reports than expected for patients aged 70-89 years and fewer reports for adults aged 20-59 years. Adverse events reported more often in Japan included interstitial lung disease, abnormal hepatic function, decreased platelet count, decreased neutrophil count and drug eruption. Adverse events reported less often included death, fatigue, dyspnoea, pain and headache. Drugs reported more often in Japan included prednisolone, methotrexate and peginterferon alfa-2b. Drugs reported less often included rosiglitazone and adalimumab as well as blood substitutes and perfusion solutions. The findings were generally robust to the sensitivity analysis except for the less often reported drugs, many of which were rarely reported in most countries, except in the USA.ConclusionAnalysis of Japanese adverse event reporting patterns in a global context has revealed key features that may reflect possible pharmaco-ethnic vulnerabilities in the Japanese, as well as differences in adverse event reporting and clinical practice. This knowledge is essential in the global collaboration of signal detection afforded by the WHO Programme for International Drug Monitoring.

Dataset Information

Sex Differences in Reported Adverse Drug Reactions to COVID-19 Drugs in a Global Database of Individual Case Safety Reports.

Publications

Sex Differences in Reported Adverse Drug Reactions to COVID-19 Drugs in a Global Database of Individual Case Safety Reports.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets