Purpose
We assessed pulmonary toxicity of cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK)4/6 inhibitors by analyzing the publicly available FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS).
Methods
Reports of interstitial ...lung disease (ILD) were characterized in terms of demographic information, including daily dose, latency, concomitant drugs known to be associated with ILD, and causality assessment (adapted WHO system). Disproportionality analyses were carried out by calculating reporting odds ratios (RORs) with 95% confidence interval (CI), accounting for major confounders, including notoriety and competition biases.
Results
ILD reports (
N
= 161) represented 2.1% and 0.3% of all reports for abemaciclib and palbocilcib/ribociclib, respectively, with negligible proportion of concomitant pneumotoxic drugs. Increased reporting was found for CDK4/6 inhibitors when compared to other drugs (ROR = 1.50; 95%CI = 1.28–1.74), and abemaciclib vs other anticancer agents (4.70; 3.62–5.98). Sensitivity analyses confirmed a strong and consistent disproportionality for abemaciclib. Higher-than-expected reporting emerged for palbociclib (1.38; 1.07–1.77) and ribociclib (2.39; 1.34–3.92) only when removing Japan reports. ILD occurred at recommended daily doses, with median latency ranging from 50 (abemaciclib) to 253 (ribociclib) days. Causality was
highly probable
in 55% of abemaciclib cases,
probable
in 68% of palbociclib cases.
Conclusions
Increased reporting of ILD with CDK4/6 inhibitors calls for further comparative population-based studies to characterize and quantify the actual risk, taking into account drug- and patient-related risk factors. These findings strengthen the role of (a) timely pharmacovigilance to detect post-marketing signals through FAERS and other real-world data, (b) clinicians to assess early, on a case-by-case basis, the potential responsibility of CDK4/6 inhibitors when diagnosing a lung injury.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
Phytoestrogens represent a diverse group of non-steroidal natural products, which seem to have some oestrogenic effects and are often marketed as food supplements. Population exposed to ...phytoestrogens is potentially increasing, in part because an unfavourable risk-benefit profile of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) for prolonged treatments (e.g., osteoporosis prevention) highlighted by the publication of the Women Health Initiative (WHI) trial in 2002, but also because many post-menopausal women often perceived phytoestrogens in food supplements as a safer alternative than HRT. Despite of increasing preclinical and clinical studies in the past decade, appealing evidence is still lacking to support the overall positive risk-benefit profile of phytoestrogens. Their status as food supplements seems to discourage studies to obtain new evidence, and the chance to buy them by user's initiative make it difficult to survey their prevalence and pattern of use. The aim of the present review is to: (a) outline the clinical scenario underlying the increased interest on phytoestrogens, by overviewing the evolution of the evidence on HRT and its main therapeutic goals (e.g., menopausal symptoms relief, chemoprevention, osteoporosis prevention); (b) address the chemical and pharmacological features (e.g. chemical structure, botanical sources, mechanism of action) of the main compounds (e.g., isoflavones, lignans, coumestans); (c) describe the clinical evidence on potential therapeutic applications; (d) put available evidence on their riskbenefit profile in a regulatory perspective, in light of the recent regulation on health claims of food supplements.
Purpose
To characterize the post-marketing reporting of serotonin syndrome (SS) due to drug-drug interactions (DDIs) with linezolid and investigate the relationship with ...pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) properties of serotonergic agents.
Methods
We queried the worldwide FDA Adverse Event Reporting System to extract SS records due to DDIs where linezolid was reported as suspect. For each serotonergic agent concomitantly reported, proportion of SS reports and mean number of DDIs were calculated and three different “SS reporting zones” were created. Relevant PK (peak concentration, area under plasma concentration curve, volume of distribution (V
D
), and lipophilicity) and PD (values of binding affinity (Ki) and IC
50
for serotonin reuptake transporter (SERT) and 5-HT
2A
) parameters were extracted for each serotonergic agent, and relevant PK/PD indexes were calculated to assess correlation with mean number of DDIs (PV index).
Results
Six hundred sixty-nine reports of SS mentioning linezolid were found, being linezolid-citalopram (
N
= 69; 10.3%) the most frequently DDI reported. Citalopram and methadone showed respectively the highest proportion of SS reports (0.28%) and the lowest mean number of DDIs (1.41). Citalopram, escitalopram, and methadone emerged as red (i.e., alert)-zone medications: they exhibited high lipophilicity and large V
D
(proxies of excellent central nervous system penetration) coupled with high potency. Among PK/PD indexes, a significant correlation with PV index was found for V
D
/Ki SERT ratio (
p
= 0.05).
Discussion
Our integrated approach suggests that linezolid is more likely to cause SS when co-administered with citalopram, escitalopram, and methadone, as inferred from their pharmacological properties. Proper management of SS should be tailored on a case-by-case basis.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, VSZLJ, ZAGLJ
The advent of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) caused a paradigm shift both in drug development and clinical practice; however, by virtue of their mechanism of action, the excessively activated ...immune system results in a multitude of off-target toxicities, the so-called immune-related adverse events (irAEs), requiring new skills for timely diagnosis and a multidisciplinary approach to successfully manage the patients. In the recent past, a plethora of large-scale pharmacovigilance analyses have characterized various irAEs in terms of spectrum and clinical features in the real world. This review aims to summarize and critically appraise the current landscape of pharmacovigilance studies, thus deriving take-home messages for oncologists. A brief primer to study design, conduction, and data interpretation is also offered. As of February 2020, 30 real-world postmarketing studies have characterized multiple irAEs through international spontaneous reporting systems, namely WHO Vigibase and the US FDA Adverse Event Reporting System. The majority of studies investigated a single irAE and provided new epidemiological evidence about class-specific patterns of irAEs (i.e. anti-cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 CTLA-4 versus anti-programmed cell death 1 PD-1 receptor, and its ligand PD-L1), kinetics of appearance, co-occurrences (overlap) among irAEs, and fatality rate. Oncologists should be aware of both strengths and limitations of these pharmacovigilance analyses, especially in terms of data interpretation. Optimal management (including
rechallenge
), predictivity of irAEs (as potential biomarkers of effectiveness), and comparative safety of ICIs (also in terms of combination regimens) represent key research priorities for next-generation real-world studies.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, VSZLJ, ZAGLJ
The purpose of this study is to characterize adverse events (AEs) of clinical interest reported with ceftolozane-tazobactam and ceftazidime-avibactam, as an aid in monitoring patients affected by ...severe multidrug-resistant Gram-negative infections. We queried the worldwide FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) and performed disproportionality analysis, selecting only designated medical events (DMEs) where ceftolozane-tazobactam and ceftazidime-avibactam were reported as suspect. Serious neurological AEs were further investigated. The reporting odds ratios were calculated, deemed significant by the lower limit of the 95% confidence interval (LL95% CI) > 1. All other drugs/events recorded in FAERS and cephalosporins showing clinical evidence of neurological AEs were respectively selected as comparator for analysis of DMEs and neurotoxicity. Qualitative analysis including case-by-case assessment and deduplication was also performed. Overall, 654 and 506 reports mentioning respectively ceftolozane-tazobactam and ceftazidime-avibactam were found, with DMEs accounting respectively for 13.1% and 10.9% of cases.
Agranulocytosis
(
N
= 12; LL95% CI = 12.40) and
pancytopenia
(14; 6.18) emerged as unexpected AEs with ceftolozane-tazobactam, while
acute pancreatitis
(7; 8.63) was an over-reported unexpected DME with ceftazidime-avibactam. After deduplication, four unequivocally different cases of
agranulocytosis
with ceftolozane-tazobactam were retained, occurring on average after 8.8 days. Causality was
probable
and
possible
respectively in three and one case. Among neurological AEs exhibiting significant disproportionality,
encephalopathy
with both antibiotics and
mental status changes
with ceftazidime-avibactam were retained in at least three cases after deduplication. Although rare, clinicians should monitor high-risk patients (i.e. individuals affected by haematological malignances, HIV infection, or treated with concomitant myelotoxic agents) for early unexpected occurrence of agranulocytosis with ceftolozane-tazobactam.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
The idiosyncratic nature of drug-induced liver injury (DILI) represents a current challenge for drug developers, regulators and clinicians. The myriad of agents (including medications, herbals, and ...dietary supplements) with recognized DILI potential not only strengthens the importance of the post-marketing phase, when urgent withdrawal sometimes occurs for rare unanticipated liver toxicity, but also shows the imperfect predictivity of pre-clinical models and the lack of validated biomarkers beyond traditional, non-specific liver function tests. After briefly reviewing proposed key mechanisms of DILI, we will focus on drug-related risk factors (physiochemical and pharmacokinetic properties) recently proposed as predictors of DILI and use cyclin-dependent kinase 4/6 inhibitors, relatively novel oral anticancer medications approved for breast cancer, as a case study to discuss the feasibility of early detection of DILI signals during drug development: published data from pivotal clinical trials, unpublished post-marketing reports of liver adverse events, and pharmacokinetic properties will be used to provide a comparative evaluation of their liver safety and gain insight into drug-related risk factors likely to explain the observed differences.
COVID-19 may lead to severe respiratory distress syndrome and high risk of death in some patients. So far (January 2021), only the antiviral remdesivir has been approved, although no significant ...benefits in terms of mortality and clinical improvement were recently reported. In a setting where effective and safe treatments for COVID-19 are urgently needed, drug repurposing may take advantage of the fact that the safety profile of an agent is already well known and allows rapid investigation of the efficacy of potential treatments, at lower costs and with reduced risk of failure. Furthermore, novel pharmaceutical formulations of older agents (e.g., aerosolized administration of chloroquine/hydroxychloroquine, remdesivir, heparin, pirfenidone) have been tested in order to increase pulmonary delivery and/or antiviral effects of potentially active drugs, thus overcoming pharmacokinetic issues. In our review, we will highlight the importance of the drug repurposing strategy in the context of COVID-19, including regulatory and ethical aspects, with a specific focus on novel pharmaceutical formulations and routes of administration.
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IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Aims
Medical case vignettes play a crucial role in medical education, yet they often fail to authentically represent diverse patients. Moreover, these vignettes tend to oversimplify the complex ...relationship between patient characteristics and medical conditions, leading to biased and potentially harmful perspectives among students. Displaying aspects of patient diversity, such as ethnicity, in written cases proves challenging. Additionally, creating these cases places a significant burden on teachers in terms of labour and time. Our objective is to explore the potential of artificial intelligence (AI)‐assisted computer‐generated clinical cases to expedite case creation and enhance diversity, along with AI‐generated patient photographs for more lifelike portrayal.
Methods
In this study, we employed ChatGPT (OpenAI, GPT 3.5) to develop diverse and inclusive medical case vignettes. We evaluated various approaches and identified a set of eight consecutive prompts that can be readily customized to accommodate local contexts and specific assignments. To enhance visual representation, we utilized Adobe Firefly beta for image generation.
Results
Using the described prompts, we consistently generated cases for various assignments, producing sets of 30 cases at a time. We ensured the inclusion of mandatory checks and formatting, completing the process within approximately 60 min per set.
Conclusions
Our approach significantly accelerated case creation and improved diversity, although prioritizing maximum diversity compromised representativeness to some extent. While the optimized prompts are easily reusable, the process itself demands computer skills not all educators possess. To address this, we aim to share all created patients as open educational resources, empowering educators to create cases independently.
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BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
AIM: To inform clinicians on the level of hepatotoxicrisk among antimycotics in the post-marketing setting,following the marketing suspension of oral ketocon-azole for drug-induced liver ...injury(DILI).METHODS: The publicly available international FAERSdatabase(2004-2011) was used to extract DILI cases(including acute liver failure events), where antimycot-ics with systemic use or potential systemic absorptionwere reported as suspect or interacting agents. The re-porting pattern was analyzed by calculating the report-ing odds ratio and corresponding 95%CI, a measure ofdisproportionality, with time-trend analysis where ap-propriate.RESULTS: From 1687284 reports submitted over the8-year period, 68115 regarded liver injury. Of these,2.9% are related to antimycotics(1964 cases, of which 112 of acute liver failure). Eleven systemic antimycotics(including ketoconazole and the newer triazole deriva-tives voriconazole and posaconazole) and terbinafine(used systemically to treat onychomicosis) generated a significant disproportionality, indicating a post-market-ing signal of risk.CONCLUSION: Virtually all antimycotics with systemic action or absorption are commonly reported in clinically significant cases of DILI. Clinicians must be aware of this aspect and monitor patients in case switch is con-sidered, especially in critical poly-treated patients under chronic treatment.
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