Detection of emerging diseases in occupational health: usefulness and limitations of the application of pharmacosurveillance methods to the database of the French National Occupational Disease Surveillance and Prevention network (RNV3P).
OBJECTIVE
To test data mining methods used in pharmacosurveillance in order to identify potential emerging disease-nuisance associations in the national occupational disease surveillance and prevention network (RNV3P) database.


METHODS
Proportional reporting ratios (PRR) used in pharmacosurveillance were applied to detect disproportional reporting of disease-nuisance associations which are not compensated by the national social security system.


RESULTS
The 24 785 reports of the RNV3P were grouped into 1344 different disease-nuisance associations reported more than twice, of which 422 did not give entitlement to compensation by the social security system. Among these associations, 162 were potentially emergent and generated a signal, of which eight associations involve cancer.


CONCLUSIONS
This work is the first stage of an exploratory investigation submitting the questions raised to experts and involving participants in the network in reflection on the hypotheses generated.
Bonneterre
Vincent
V
Faculté de Médecine, Domaine de la Merci, 38706 La Tronche Cedex, France. VBonneterre@chu-grenoble.fr
Bicout
Dominique J
DJ
Larabi
Linda
L
Bernardet
Cyril
C
Maitre
Anne
A
Tubert-Bitter
Pascale
P
de Gaudemaris
Régis
R
D000465:Algorithms; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D009784:Occupational Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control; D016272:Occupational Health; D012042:Registries; D012984:Software