🤖 Automate Pharmacovigilance monitoring on Literature.

Pharmacovigilance and in general signal detection over adverse effects can in part be automated through PubMed filtering and MeSH search strategy.

Adverse Drug Events (ADE) and Adverse Drug Reaction (ADR) should be monitored over different channels such as your email, your safety database, EMA, FDA, literature, social media channels and grey literature.

In this guide we are focusing on how to monitor ADE within literature with MeSH.

🧾 Select "Case Reports"

⚕️ Add MeSH selection

You need to specify broad enough MeSH to capture any adverse events, but at the same time minimizing the noise of non-related articles.

This is our selection.

• Adverse Effects[MeSH Subheading]:
  The most comprehensive MeSH in the group. If a reference reports a known adverse effect, it will most likely have this MeSH term.
• Chemically Induced[MeSH Subheading]:
  A physical or physiological response due to exposure to a specific chemical, such as a drug or toxic substance.
• Contraindications[MeSH Terms]:
  A specific condition, factor, or circumstance under which a particular medical treatment, intervention, medication, or procedure should not be used or is not recommended.
• Abnormalities, drug induced[MeSH Terms], Abnormality, drug induced[MeSH Terms]:
  A medical condition or an unusual physiological or pathological state that is caused by the use or administration of a specific drug or medication.
• Drug Eruptions[MeSH Terms] OR Drug eruption[MeSH Terms]:
  Skin reactions or dermatological manifestations that occur as a result of the use of certain drugs or medications.
• Neurotoxicity Syndrome[MeSH Terms]: Refers to a condition characterized by toxic effects on the nervous system, typically caused by exposure to certain substances or medications that adversely affect nerve cells or neural pathways
• Drug Hypersensitivity[MeSH Terms]

Full string: ((Adverse Effects[MeSH Subheading]) OR (Chemically Induced[MeSH Subheading]) OR (contraindications[MeSH Terms]) OR (abnormalities, drug induced[MeSH Terms]) OR (abnormality, drug induced[MeSH Terms]) OR (drug eruptions[MeSH Terms]) OR (drug eruption[MeSH Terms]) OR (neurotoxicity syndrome[MeSH Terms]) OR (drug hypersensitivity[MeSH Terms]))

Now you can simply add a medical device, a drug, or an ingredient on top of the search and add an "AND".

🚀 Automate the Search

When in PubMed:

1. Sign In to use an existing account or click on Register for an account to establish a new account.
2. Perform the search to be saved or updated regularly in the database of interest.
3. Click the "Save Search" search link that appears near the top of the search results page.
4. In MyNCBI save the search and choose the settings for automated E-mail updates. These settings can be modified at any time by accessing the MyNCBI account.

When in PapersHive:

Check out PapersHive's guide in how to save and monitor your searches.

🔥 Conclusions

An example in how to track Adverse Events of "Ibuprofen" within literature:

• PubMed
• PapersHive

When performing an experiment, this turned out quite beneficial with 69% ADE tracked successfully from literature in perfect automation.