Abstract
The “INTERACTIONS” section of package inserts aims to provide alert-type warnings in clinical practice; however, these also include many drug–drug interactions that occur rarely. Moreover, considering that drug–drug interaction alert systems were created based on package inserts, repeated alerts can lead to alert fatigue. Although investigations have been conducted to determine prescriptions that induce drug–drug interactions, no studies have focused explicitly on the adverse events induced by drug–drug interactions. We, therefore, sought to investigate the true occurrence of adverse events caused by drug pair contraindications for coadministration in routine clinical practice. Toward this, we created a list of drug combinations that were designated as “contraindications for coadministration” and extracted the cases of adverse drug events from the Japanese Adverse Drug Event Report database that occurred due to combined drug usage. We then calculated the reporters’ recognition rate of the drug–drug interactions. Out of the 2,121 investigated drug pairs, drug–drug interactions were reported in 43 pairs, 23 of which included an injected drug and many included catecholamines. Warfarin potassium and miconazole (19 reports), azathioprine and febuxostat (11 reports), and warfarin potassium and iguratimod (six reports) were among the 20 most-commonly reported oral medication pairs that were contraindicated for coadministration, for which recognition rates of drug–drug interactions were high. Although these results indicate that only a few drug pair contraindications for coadministration were associated with adverse drug events (43 pairs out of 2,121 pairs), it remains necessary to translate these findings into clinical practice.
