High daily doses of benzodiazepines among Quebec seniors: prevalence and correlates

BACKGROUND: Use of high daily doses of benzodiazepines is generally contraindicated for seniors. While both patient and physician factors may influence the use of high daily doses, previous research on the effect of patient factors has been extremely limited. The objectives of this study were to determine the one year prevalence of use of high daily doses of benzodiazepines, and examine physician and patient correlates of such use among Quebec community-dwelling seniors. METHODS: Patient information for 1423 community-dwelling Quebec seniors who participated in the Canadian Study of Health and Aging was linked to provincial health insurance administrative data bases containing detailed information on prescriptions received and prescribers. RESULTS: The standardized one year period prevalence of use of high daily doses of benzodiazepines was 7.9%. Use of high daily doses was more frequent among younger seniors and those who had reported anxiety during the previous year. Patients without cognitive impairment were more likely to receive high dose prescriptions from general practitioners, while those with cognitive impairment were more likely to receive high dose prescriptions from specialists. CONCLUSION: High dose prescribing appears to be related to both patient and physician factors

Educational sessions in pharmacovigilance: What do the doctors think?

Background: The aim of this study was to determine physicians"opinion regarding pharmacovigilance feedback sessions. A survey was conducted in a teaching hospital, and the physicians who attended the sessions were invited to participate by filling out a structured questionnaire. All sessions included a review of adverse drug reactions identified at the hospital and information on pharmacovigilance issues (news on warnings released by regulatory agencies or drug toxicity problems identified by recently published studies in medical journals). The survey questions were related to the interest, satisfaction, and belief in the utility of the sessions. A Likert scale (0-10 points) was used to assess physicians" opinions. Findings: A total of 159 physicians attended the sessions and 115 (72.3%) participated in the survey. The mean (SD) age was 38.9 (12.1) years, and 72 (62.6%) were men. The mean (SD) scores of interest, satisfaction with the information provided, and belief in the utility of these sessions were 7.52 (1.61), 7.58 (1.46), and 8.05 (1.38) respectively. Significant differences were observed among physicians according to medical category and speciality in terms of interest, satisfaction, and belief in the utility of those sessions. Conclusions: Educational activities for physicians, such as feedback sessions, can be integrated into the pharmacovigilance activities. Doctors who attend the sessions are interested in and satisfied with the information provided and consider the sessions to be useful. Additional studies on the development and effectiveness of educational activities in pharmacovigilance are necessary

Estimating time-to-onset of adverse drug reactions from spontaneous reporting databases.

International audienceBACKGROUND: Analyzing time-to-onset of adverse drug reactions from treatment exposure contributes to meeting pharmacovigilance objectives, i.e. identification and prevention. Post-marketing data are available from reporting systems. Times-to-onset from such databases are right-truncated because some patients who were exposed to the drug and who will eventually develop the adverse drug reaction may do it after the time of analysis and thus are not included in the data. Acknowledgment of the developments adapted to right-truncated data is not widespread and these methods have never been used in pharmacovigilance. We assess the use of appropriate methods as well as the consequences of not taking right truncation into account (naïve approach) on parametric maximum likelihood estimation of time-to-onset distribution. METHODS: Both approaches, naïve or taking right truncation into account, were compared with a simulation study. We used twelve scenarios for the exponential distribution and twenty-four for the Weibull and log-logistic distributions. These scenarios are defined by a set of parameters: the parameters of the time-to-onset distribution, the probability of this distribution falling within an observable values interval and the sample size. An application to reported lymphoma after anti TNF-¿ treatment from the French pharmacovigilance is presented. RESULTS: The simulation study shows that the bias and the mean squared error might in some instances be unacceptably large when right truncation is not considered while the truncation-based estimator shows always better and often satisfactory performances and the gap may be large. For the real dataset, the estimated expected time-to-onset leads to a minimum difference of 58 weeks between both approaches, which is not negligible. This difference is obtained for the Weibull model, under which the estimated probability of this distribution falling within an observable values interval is not far from 1. CONCLUSIONS: It is necessary to take right truncation into account for estimating time-to-onset of adverse drug reactions from spontaneous reporting databases

The Social Impact of Suspected Adverse Drug Reactions: An analysis of the Canada Vigilance Spontaneous Reporting Database

INTRODUCTION: Some adverse drug reactions (ADRs) may involve direct social issues, such as impaired quality of life, work productivity, or social functioning, as opposed to being social consequences of medical adverse events. Data on ADRs with a direct social impact remain scarce in the literature. OBJECTIVE: Our objective was to describe the ADRs consisting of direct social issues that have been recorded in the Canadian national spontaneous reporting system (Canada Vigilance). METHODS: We conducted an analysis of the online Canada Vigilance spontaneous reporting database from 1 January 1965 (inception) to 31 December 2015 (last date available). We manually examined all Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA) preferred terms (PTs) found in the Canada Vigilance database to identify those that involved direct social issues. We then used those PTs to search for relevant individual case safety reports (ICSRs). We conducted a descriptive analysis of the following ICSR characteristics: patient and reporter characteristics, type of ADR, seriousness (as assessed by the reporter and according to the International Conference on Harmonisation criteria of seriousness), and suspected drug(s). We compared the characteristics of ADRs with and without direct social impact. RESULTS: Among the 11,946 MedDRA PTs recorded in Canada Vigilance, we retained 40 that had a direct social impact. Using these PTs, we identified 9557 relevant ICSRs (corresponding to 6670 patients). The proportion of ADRs consisting of direct social issues increased over time, with a sharp transient peak in 2008. The majority were reported by healthcare professionals and consumers (56.7 and 37.8%, respectively). The mean age of patients was 45.4 years, and 53.3% were females. Direct social issues consisted of personality disorders and behaviour disturbances (41.6%) followed by neurological disorders (34.2%). The majority of ADRs were considered serious by reporters (76.5%), with 26.8% resulting in hospitalization. Commonly suspected health products included nervous system drugs (63.3%) and antineoplastic and immunomodulating agents (23.6%). Compared with other ADRs, those with a direct social impact were more often reported by consumers, involved patients who were on average 5 years younger, and were more frequently assessed as being serious by the reporters. CONCLUSIONS: Findings from this study support the consideration of direct social issues as ADRs in the detection of drug safety signals