title: Pharmacovigilance based on prescription databases.
abstract: Prescription databases are indispensible in drug safety research and surveillance. For suspected rare serious adverse drug reactions, the confirmation and quantitative risk assessment requires proper epidemiological studies. Often prescription databases provide the information on drug exposure for such studies. Aberrant drug utilization in terms of overuse, underuse, polypharmacy etc. may be a threat to the health of the patient, and these aspects can best be studied by prescription databases. In cases of international drug safety alerts, prescription databases may provide information required for rational actions to be taken.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Public Health, Clinical Pharmacology, University of Southern Denmark, Odense. lf-gram@cekfo.sdu.dk
authors.forename: L E
authors.initials: LE
authors.lastname: Gram
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hallas
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Andersen
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D016208:Databases, Factual; D011307:Drug Prescriptions; D004363:Drug Utilization; D064420:Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions; D006801:Humans; D017891:Pharmacoepidemiology; D019338:Polypharmacy; D018570:Risk Assessment