PURPOSE New pharmacovigilance methods are needed as a consequence of the morbidity caused by drugs. We exploit fine-grained drug related adverse event information extracted by text mining from electronic medical records (EMRs) to stratify patients based on their adverse events and to determine adverse event co-occurrences. METHODS We analyzed the similarity of adverse event profiles of 2347 p...

Medication constitutes a major clinical intervention that may yield significant benefits for the patients. Yet, it can also cause considerable harm, if inappropriately used/ applied. In the US, adverse drug effects are considered as one of the 10 principal causes of death, which has been estimated to harm at least 1.5 million patients/year, with about 25% of the cases being preventable [1]. Hos...

Sorafenib was the first multikinase inhibitor to be approved for use in renal cell cancer (RCC) in the US (2005) and in Europe (2006). In the Treatment Approaches in Renal Cell Cancer Global Evaluation Trial (TARGET), sorafenib showed a significant progression-free survival advantage over placebo in patients with advanced RCC. Incidence rates of adverse events were significantly higher with sor...