A novel method for signal detection of adverse drug reactions based on proportional reporting ratios.
OBJECTIVE
The proportional reporting ratio (PRR) is a statistical method for signal detection of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) based on unbalanced proportions. Although effective, this method only takes into account the proportional relation based on target adverse reactions and ignores the relation between a given ADR and the others for the same drug. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the calculation deviation in PRR. In this study, we developed a novel PRR (NPRR) method and compared it with the original PRR method for the purpose of a combined application of these two methods for ADR signal detection.


METHODS
NPRR is also based on unbalanced proportions, in which the proportion for a given ADR is linked to a specific drug (or all other drugs), and then divided by the corresponding proportion for all other ADRs.


RESULTS
Applying this method to the ADR data of Jiangsu Province, China in 2008 and 2009, we detected 3,021 signals. Compared with the PRR method, the sensitivity of our method is 0.99, the specificity is 0.97, and the Youden index is 0.96.


CONCLUSIONS
NPRR is an excellent method supplementary to PRR. The combination of these two methods can reduce calculation deviation and detect ADRs more effectively.
Wei
Jian-Xiang
JX
Department of Information Science, Nanjing College for Population Program Management, 210042, Nanjing, People's Republic of China.
Li
Ming
M
Sun
Yue-Hong
YH
Lu
Ye
Y
Xu
Hou-Ming
HM
D016907:Adverse Drug Reaction Reporting Systems / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D016208:Databases, Factual; D064420:Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions; D012984:Software