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David M Coulter a Centre for Adverse
Reactions Monitoring and Intensive Medicines Monitoring Programme,
Department of Preventive and Social Medicine, University of Otago,
Dunedin, New Zealand, b Uppsala Monitoring Centre,
WHO Collaborating Centre for International Drug Monitoring, S-75320
Uppsala, Sweden
Correspondence to: I R Edwards ralph.edwards{at}who-umc.org
Objectives:
To examine the relation between
antipsychotic drugs and myocarditis and cardiomyopathy.
Design:
Data mining using bayesian statistics
implemented in a neural network architecture.
Setting:
International database on adverse drug
reactions run by the World Health Organization programme for
international drug monitoring.
Main outcome measures:
Reports mentioning
antipsychotic drugs, cardiomyopathy, or myocarditis.
Results:
A strong signal existed for an association between clozapine and cardiomyopathy and myocarditis. An association was also seen with other antipsychotics as a group. The association was
based on sufficient cases with adequate documentation and apparent lack
of confounding to constitute a signal. Associations between myocarditis
or cardiomyopathy and lithium, chlorpromazine, fluphenazine,
haloperidol, and risperidone need further investigation.
Conclusions:
Some antipsychotic drugs seem to be
linked to cardiomyopathy and myocarditis. The study shows the potential of bayesian neural networks in analysing data on drug safety.
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