Scientists at Microsoft, Stanford and Columbia University, using automated software to mine data from 82 million internet searches for information related to, found a side effect related to interaction between an antidepressant (paroxetine) and a cholesterol drug (prevastatin) that had as yet gone undetected by the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System. The study, published online yesterday by the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, found that people who searched for information on both drugs were more likely to do a search for information on hyperglycemia as well.
Abstract →White, R., Tatonetti, N., Shah, N., Altman, R., Horvitz, E. Web-scale pharmacovigilance: listening to signals from the crowd. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association. Online March 6, 2013
Of further interest:
Unreported Side Effects of Drugs Are Found Using Internet Search Data, Study Finds (NY Times)
