Adverse Events
"AdverseEvents, Inc. (AEI) is the first service provider to deliver accurate, real-time information on adverse drug events reported to the FDA. AEI utilizes a unique data sourcing method called RxFilter™, a proprietary 17-step data refinement process that standardizes and normalizes the data from the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System (AERS) into a user-friendly, fully searchable, database of over 4,000 approved medications. Over 500,000 medication adverse events are reported yearly to the FDA; estimated to be only 10% of all actual adverse events. As a leading resource for the pharmaceutical industry, AEI supports companies with competitive intelligence and data to inform drug marketing decisions and business development strategies. With AEI, the healthcare industry is able to quantify the benefit-risk assessments of FDA approved drugs to fully understand the scope of safety issues, based on accurate rates of side effects from such medications."
This website allows doctors and patients to not only search a drug's known side effects, but you can also see recent drug news, find out which drugs have the most side effects, and as a registered user you too can share your the side effects you experience with your meds.
In my experience, pharmaceutical inserts and websites are not the accurate when it comes to listing side effects, so I highly recommend utilizing this website. And please share this on your blogs, discussion forums, facebook, twitter, google+, as well as your doctors.
3 comments:
Jasmine,
Excellent find! I was just talking about medication side effects on my Facebook wall yesterday. I'll have to share this link there. Thank you for posting this. I hadn't heard of it.
Jeanne
As someone with a degree focused on adverse event reporting and prevention, let me tell you this monster is EVERYWHERE! While a site like AdverseEvents is helpful for transparency, this only reports events that are REPORTED. A majority of events that don't culminate in serious bodily harm are never reported. In 2009 I have the H1N1 flu injection and suffered an adverse event that required emergency care. This was not a known reaction that had been reported by the drug manufacturer, but, with more digging and a call to CDC, it was tracked down as a known reaction during testing. It didn't occur in a wide number of cases and thus, didn't need to be reported. The CDC told the treating physician that reactions like this are seldom reported, and are usually never connected back to the originating source because of lack of awareness and under utilization of adverse event reporting protocol.
I want to stress that you cannot rely on medical professionals to ALWAYS report events. They are supposed to, and regulations enforce it, but because many are in bed with drug companies, some professionals try and place the blame on other medications. I had this happen with the flu injection. Thankfully a doctor didn't give up and took a shot in the dark by calling the CDC.
Thank you Jeanne. I noticed it on a couple other blogs and thought I'd post about it. Thank you for sharing it also :)
Endochick, thank you for your input. I'm new to this site, but from what I can see patients can also list their side effects - not just doctors or CDC. (Of course, if their side effect is so severe that they can't post, we would never know.) If I'm incorrect, please let me know and I'll edit my post.
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