Drug interactions with dietary or herbal supplements could be cause of hospital stays

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (8) ◽  
pp. 1843-1849
Author(s):  
Faisal Shakeel ◽  
Fang Fang ◽  
Kelley M Kidwell ◽  
Lauren A Marcath ◽  
Daniel L Hertz

Introduction Patients with cancer are increasingly using herbal supplements, unaware that supplements can interact with oncology treatment. Herb–drug interaction management is critical to ensure optimal treatment outcomes. Several screening tools exist to detect drug–drug interactions, but their performance to detect herb–drug interactions is not known. This study compared the performance of eight drug–drug interaction screening tools to detect herb–drug interaction with anti-cancer agents. Methods The herb–drug interaction detection performance of four subscription (Micromedex, Lexicomp, PEPID, Facts & Comparisons) and free (Drugs.com, Medscape, WebMD, RxList) drug–drug interaction tools was assessed. Clinical relevance of each herb–drug interaction was determined using Natural Medicine and each drug–drug interaction tool. Descriptive statistics were used to calculate sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value. Linear regression was used to compare performance between subscription and free tools. Results All tools had poor sensitivity (<0.20) for detecting herb–drug interaction. Lexicomp had the highest positive predictive value (0.98) and best overall performance score (0.54), while Medscape was the best performing free tool (0.52). The worst subscription tools were as good as or better than the best free tools, and as a group subscription tools outperformed free tools on all metrics. Using an average subscription tool would detect one additional herb–drug interaction for every 10 herb–drug interactions screened by a free tool. Conclusion Lexicomp is the best available tool for screening herb–drug interaction, and Medscape is the best free alternative; however, the sensitivity and performance for detecting herb–drug interaction was far lower than for drug–drug interactions, and overall quite poor. Further research is needed to improve herb–drug interaction screening performance.


2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (7) ◽  
pp. e613-e622 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Ramos-Esquivel ◽  
Álvaro Víquez-Jaikel ◽  
Cristina Fernández

Purpose: Patients with cancer frequently use herbal supplements and concomitant medications along with antineoplastic agents. These patients are at high risk of herb-drug interactions (HDIs) and drug-drug interactions (DDIs). We aimed to determine clinically relevant DDIs and HDIs leading to pharmaceutical intervention. Methods: Patients starting a new anticancer therapy were asked to complete a questionnaire to identify concomitant use of any over-the-counter drug or herbal supplement. Potential DDIs and HDIs were identified using two different databases. If a potentially clinically relevant DDI was recognized by the clinical pharmacist, a notification was sent to the prescribing oncologist, who decided whether to carry out a suggested intervention. Regression analyses were performed to identify variables associated with clinically relevant DDIs. Results: A total of 149 patients were included in this study, with 36 potentially clinically relevant DDIs identified in 26 patients (17.4%; 95% CI, 11.3% to 23.5%), all of them leading to therapy modifications. In total, four patients (2.7%; 95% CI, 0.1% to 5.3%) had experienced clinical consequences from DDIs at the time of pharmacist notification. Additionally, 84 patients (56.4%; 95% CI, 48.4% to 64.4%) reported using concurrent herbal supplements, and 122 possible HDIs were detected. Concomitant use of two or more drugs was independently associated with high risk of a clinically significant DDI (odds ratio, 2.53; 95% CI, 1.08 to 5.91; P = .03). Conclusion: Potentially clinically relevant DDIs and possible HDIs were frequently detected in this prospective study. A multidisciplinary approach is required to identify and avoid potentially harmful combinations with anticancer therapy.


Author(s):  
Kameswaran R. ◽  
Shanmuga Sundaram Rajagopal ◽  
Krishnaveni Kandasamy ◽  
Karthikeyan Krishnan

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the potential drug interactions (pDIs) among hospitalized patients in cardiac and neurology wards in 3 tertiary care hospitals.Methods: A prospective, observational study was carried out for a period of 12 mo. A sample of 1330 patients was assessed for pDDIs using Micromedex®-2.7and drugs.com and www.dugs.com.Results: A total of 1330 patients were analyzed and it was found that 685 were cardiac and 645 were neurology patients. The study identified 524 (76.49%) cardiac patients and 425 (65.89%) neurology patients, with potential drug-drug interactions (pDDIs) higher in male cardiac [298 (56.87%)] and male neurology [235 (55.29%)] patients, compared to females. Incidences of pDDIs were found to be higher in the age group of 60-70 y in cardiac [193 (36.83%)] and neurology [165 (38.84%)] patients and incidences of interactions based on duration of (4-6 d) hospital stays in cardiac were 380 (72.53%) and 275 (64.70%) in neurology patients respectively. Moreover, 51.90% cardiac patients and 57.41% neurology patients were found to be prescribed with more number of drugs in cardiac and neurology (7 drugs) patients, were found to have developed higher incidences of pDDIs. The most common drug interacting pair was between aspirin and clopidogrel combination, observed in 245 cardiac and 316 in neurology patients. Drug-food interactions (DFIs) were found with between atorvastatin-citrus fruits in cardiac and phenytoin-protein rich foods in neurology patients. The most common drug-disease interaction (D-DIs) was found to between isosorbide dinitrate–myocardial infarction in cardiac and carbamazepine-seizuresin neurology respectively.Conclusion: It is recommended that physicians should be aware of the interactions among those drugs while prescribing, and careful monitoring is also required.


Pharmaceutics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 610
Author(s):  
Min-Koo Choi ◽  
Im-Sook Song

Due to the growing use of herbal supplementation—ease of taking herbal supplements with therapeutics drugs (i [...]


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