CredibleMeds® Announces Open-Source Drug Safety Resource

QTdrugs List and Clinical Decision Support System Identifies Patients at Risk for Sudden Death; Adverse Drug Event Causality Analysis (ADECA™) Technology Generates QTdrugs List to Save Lives

TUCSON, AZ--(Marketwired - Oct 23, 2013) - AZCERT's ADECA™ technology was developed with funding from the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality and has been used to generate an open-source, drug safety resource for use in Healthcare Information Technology systems. The ADECA™ technology is based on a systems-based causality assessment for drug-induced sudden death and is described in a recent publication in Nature Reviews (Cardiology) (April, 2013) and on the CredibleMeds.org website maintained by AZCERT. Using ADECA™, AZCERT scientists generate a continuously updated compilation of medicines, known as the QTdrugs List. The drugs are placed in subcategories according to their relative risk of causing heart arrhythmias and sudden death. CredibleMeds' founder, Dr. Raymond L. Woosley said, "We encourage healthcare institutions to incorporate the QTdrugs List into their electronic clinical decision support systems to potentially save lives." He noted that Mayo Clinic researchers recently reported (Mayo Clinic Proceedings April 2013, p.315) that they incorporated AZCERT's list of QT-prolonging drugs in a clinical decision support system that identified patients with a high "pro-QTc score" who were at high risk of death. The authors observed that "... the patient's pro-QTc score was a significant predictor of mortality, with medications and electrolyte abnormalities as the most important components." Although the lists have been previously used as research tools and as medical reference resources, the article in the Mayo Clinic Proceeding is one of the first to demonstrate that the ADECA-generated lists can help identify patients at high risk of death in a clinical decision support system.

Using ADECA™, AZCERT has identified 99 frequently prescribed medications that prolong the QT interval on the ECG, a risk factor for arrhythmia and sudden death. From these 99, ADECA™ identified a subset of 39 medicines that have clear evidence of causing sudden death due to the heart arrhythmia known as torsades de pointes. The QTdrugs list is maintained on the CredibleMeds.org website by the non-profit organization, AZCERT.

www.crediblemeds.org

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