Interest of a general practitioner pharmacovigilance network to provide drug information: A comparative study in France

Abstract

Since 2015, Toulouse University PharmacoVigilance Center (TUPVC) set up a pharmacovigilance (PV) general practitioner (GP) network, called PharmacoMIP-MG. A clinical research assistant (CRA) moves to the office of GPs included in the PharmacoMIP-MG network (PMIP-GPs). There, he collects the adverse drug reaction (ADR) reports and drug-related questions. This additional support is not available to GPs not included in the PV network (NoPMIP-GPs) who have to ask drug questions spontaneously to the TUPVC. The objective of this study was to compare the number and characteristics of drug questions between PMIP-GPs and NoPMIP-GPs. All questions asked by GPs to the TUPVC from 01 Jan 2015 to 31 Dec 2017 were reviewed. Questions were classified into two groups: "general" and "related to a patient". The "related to a patient" category was divided in three subgroups: "ADRs", Drug-Drug Interactions and "Drug Management". Drugs were classified according to anatomical therapeutic chemical (ATC) classification. For comparisons, Wilcoxon test, Chi2 test or Fisher test were used. During the study period, the CRA collected 293 questions from the 165 PMIP-GPs. TUPVC received 333 questions asked spontaneously by the 3400 NoPMIP-GPs. PMIP-GPs asked significantly 3 times more questions than NoPMIP-GPs. Most of the GP questions were classified in the "related to a patient" category (74.9%). When we compared the proportion of "related to a patient" to "general" questions, there was no statistically significant difference between PMIP-GPs and NoPMIP-GPs. PMIP-GPs asked more questions about "ADRs", but less on "Drug Management" and or "Drug-Drug Interactions". The drugs most frequently involved were amiodarone, rivaroxaban and levothyroxine. This is the first study about GPs' drug-related questions asked to a PV center. We found that an organization, such as a CRA-GP "face to face" visit, increased the number of drug questions. This kind of organization should be developed in order to improve independent drug information outreach.