The New York Times is among media reporting on a study by White et al in JAMIA (Journal of the Medical Informatics Association) --
J Am Med Inform Assoc doi:10.1136/amiajnl-2012-001482
Brief communication
Web-scale pharmacovigilance: listening to signals from the crowd
Ryen W White1, Nicholas P Tatonetti2, Nigam H Shah3, Russ B Altman4, Eric Horvitz1
+ Author Affiliations
1Microsoft Research, Redmond, Washington, USA
2Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA
3Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
4Departments of Bioengineering and Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USACorrespondence to Dr Ryen W White, Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA 98052, USA; ryenw@microsoft.com
Received 9 November 2012
Revised 8 January 2013
Accepted 13 January 2013
Published Online First 6 March 2013Abstract (emphasis added)
Adverse drug events cause substantial morbidity and mortality and are often discovered after a drug comes to market. We hypothesized that Internet users may provide early clues about adverse drug events via their online information-seeking. We conducted a large-scale study of Web search log data gathered during 2010. We pay particular attention to the specific drug pairing of paroxetine and pravastatin, whose interaction was reported to cause
The New York Times hyperglycemia after the time period of the online logs used in the analysis. We also examine sets of drug pairs known to be associated with hyperglycemia and those not associated with hyperglycemia. We find that anonymized signals on drug interactions can be mined from search logs. Compared to analyses of other sources such as electronic health records (EHR), logs are inexpensive to collect and mine. The results demonstrate that logs of the search activities of populations of computer users can contribute to drug safety surveillance.
Full JAMIA article available via you local library
The New York Times story --
Unreported Side Effects of Drugs Are Found Using Internet Search Data, Study Finds
By JOHN MARKOFF
Published: March 6, 2013
Using data drawn from queries entered into Google, Microsoft and Yahoo search engines, scientists at Microsoft, Stanford and Columbia University have for the first time been able to detect evidence of unreported prescription drug side effects before they were found by the Food and Drug Administration’s warning system.
Using automated software tools to examine queries by six million Internet users taken from Web search logs in 2010, the researchers looked for searches relating to an antidepressant, paroxetine, and a cholesterol lowering drug, pravastatin. They were able to find evidence that the combination of the two drugs caused high blood sugar.
The study, which was reported in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association on Wednesday, is based on data-mining techniques similar to those employed by services like Google Flu Trends, which has been used to give early warning of the prevalence of the sickness to the public.
The F.D.A. asks physicians to report side effects through a system known as the Adverse Event Reporting System. But its scope is limited by the fact that data is generated only when a physician notices something and reports it.
Full article continues at link