Can ‘Big Data’ Help Increase Drug Safety?

Healthcare Informatics: Using the Food and Drug Administration's Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS), a hospital electronic health records database, and an animal model, a team of researchers at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai report that by adding a second drug to the diabetes drug rosiglitazone, adverse events dropped enormously. That suggests that drugs could be repurposed to improve drug safety, including lowering the risk of heart attacks. The research is published online Oct. 9 in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

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