Drug Safety Matters

Medicines safety monitoring is a continuous process that begins with pre-marketing clinical trials and continues with post-marketing studies to fill any gaps in knowledge. With Marianne Lunzer from A…

Healthcare professionals are key players in medicines safety but they often lack the time or knowledge to report adverse drug reactions. To change that, we need to urgently rethink how we teach pharm…

The vast amount of real-world data collected during routine clinical care is a treasure trove of safety information – but there are challenges to overcome before this rich source of evidence can be a…

Spontaneous reports of adverse drug reactions are a common source of evidence in pharmacovigilance, but as the science evolves, so do the types of data used to find and assess signals. Uppsala Monito…

Most pharmacovigilance professionals will have heard of masking – a statistical issue where reports for one drug hide signals for other drugs. But the problem gained fresh attention when record amoun…

The COVID-19 pandemic forced pharmacovigilance experts to revisit their processes to deal with unprecedented volumes of data and catch unexpected safety issues. Elena Rocca from Oslo Metropolitan Uni…

The Identification of Medicinal Products (IDMP) standards promise to harmonise how pharmaceutical products and substances are described around the world. But how will that benefit patients and who wi…

Public trust in vaccines hinges on their safety – but to make sure vaccines are safe, we must have systems in place to detect and manage any side effects. Dr Madhava Ram Balakrishnan, medical officer…

Managing antimicrobial resistance (AMR) will require innovative solutions from many different disciplines. Could pharmacovigilance be one of them? Jean Marie Vianney Habarugira and Albert Figueras, w…

With the right care, people infected with HIV can lead long and healthy lives. But as with any life-long medical treatment, it is important to acknowledge and manage any side effects. Henry Zakumumpa…

Access to medical products has increased considerably in Africa in recent years, but safety monitoring systems haven’t exactly kept pace and many African countries still struggle to address safety is…

People’s perception of risk can vary greatly from person to person, making it challenging for healthcare professionals to communicate benefits and harms of medicines in a balanced fashion. Alexandra …

The loss of vital health records is a universal problem for refugees. When their medical information goes missing, patients are less likely to receive the care they need and more likely to be prescri…

Statistical tools can not only cut through the noise in large pharmacovigilance databases. They can also help identify more clinically meaningful patterns in the data. Uppsala Monitoring Centre’s Jim…

With vaccine hesitancy on the rise and misinformation spreading like wildfire on social media, drug safety specialists may have a hard time knowing how to talk about side effects without affecting pe…

It’s not always easy to choose the best medicine for a child. Some drugs are inappropriate for young patients, while others require special consideration or monitoring. For years, clinicians had only…

Fuelled by disinformation and an array of other cultural and economic factors, vaccine hesitancy is one of the greatest global health communication challenges of our times. But to craft the empatheti…

Genetic variation is one of the reasons people differ in their response to medicines. Understanding that variation can inform more refined choices of drugs and doses – ultimately preventing undesired…

With COVID-19 vaccinations rolling at full speed in many countries, there’s a lot of talk about vaccine safety monitoring. But what exactly does that mean and how should we be interpreting data on si…

While COVID-19 vaccinations are picking up speed in many wealthy countries, citizens of lower-income countries still face a long wait ­– and where demand exceeds supply, black markets tend to form. S…