Data mining, EHRs help target dangerous drug combo

STANFORD, CA – Data mining and electronic health records helped researchers at some of the country’s most prestigious universities discover a dangerous of a common drug combination.

A widely used combination of two medications may cause unexpected increases in blood glucose levels, according to a study conducted at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University and Harvard Medical School. Researchers were surprised at the finding because neither of the two drugs – one, an antidepressant marketed as Paxil, and the other, a cholesterol-lowering medication called Pravachol – has a similar effect alone.

The study relied on an adverse-event reporting database maintained by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and on sophisticated electronic medical records used by each of the three participating institutions. They used data-mining techniques to identify patterns of associations in large populations that would not be readily apparent to physicians treating individual patients.

 

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