Syndromic surveillance of acute gastroenteritis based on drug consumption.
Since 1998, the French Health Insurance (NHI) system had established a national database in order to reimburse drug prescriptions. These electronical data are a considerable potential source for syndromic surveillance because of their exhaustive and regular updates. The aim of this study was to develop a method to identify acute gastroenteritis (AG) cases from drug reimbursements of the NHI database. The algorithm aimed at discriminating AG from other pathologies was determined from a sample of 206 AG prescriptions and 351 non-AG prescriptions collected in five pharmacies. The AG case identification was mainly based on the lag time between the prescription and delivery day, the occurrence of non-AG case-specific drugs, AG case-specific drug associations and treatment duration. The discriminant algorithm led to a sensitive and specific indicator of medically treated cases of AG with a time-spatial resolution power which met the need for waterborne AG surveillance.
Laboratoire de Pharmacie Galénique, LAGEP UMR CNRS 5007, Faculté de Médecine Pharmacie, Rouen, France. frederic.bounoure@univ-rouen.fr
F
F
Bounoure
P
P
Beaudeau
D
D
Mouly
M
M
Skiba
M
M
Lahiani-Skiba
D000208:Acute Disease; D000465:Algorithms; D005260:Female; D005759:Gastroenteritis / Q000188:drug therapy* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011159:Population Surveillance; D055553:Prescription Drugs / Q000627:therapeutic use*; D012189:Retrospective Studies
D055553:Prescription Drugs