There ’s always that part at the end of drug commercials that exit something like : if you develop sausage balloon fingers , net feet , or a three - week erection , call your doctor ! But as exhaustive as those auctioneer - style lists fathom , they barely scratch the surface when it comes to the side effects pople are actually experiencing .
Stanford researchers created an algorithm thatidentified1,332 drug side effects not currently number on labels . They gauge that each drug has 329 adverse chemical reaction on average , virtually five time the 69 presently listed .
The FDA maintains adatabaseof about 4 million side effects cover by Dr. and patients , but no one ’s certain incisively what causes most of them . That ’s partly because so many people take more than one drug at a time — seniors take an average of seven — and it ’s impossible to know how all of the combinations react in each mortal . It ’s also because individuals often respond differently to the same drugs .
So researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine wrote an algorithm that sift through gazillion of reports and surfaces what they call “ true ” side - essence . They reported their new method in Science Translational Medicine .
One important contrary interaction they turn up was that serotonin re-uptake inhibitors ( SSRIs ) , which are antidepressants , interact badly with usual blood pressure medications , diuretics phone thiazides , importantly increase the risk of a philia precondition call keep up QT , which can run to temporary heartbeats and sudden destruction .
But the FDA ca n’t just slap this information on label now . They have to do follow - up research , maybe a clinical test examining people who take both SSRIs and line of descent pressing meds , to monitor them for prolonged QT . And what to do with the information on the thousands of side effects in this new database ? count like the FDA ’s job just got even harder . [ Nature News ]
Image : Shutterstock / Natalia Klenova
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