Abstract
Prescription patterns of antipsychotic drugs (APDs) are typically sourced from country-specific data. In this study, a digital pharmacoepidemiological approach was used to investigate APD preferences globally. Publicly available data on worldwide web search intensities in Google for 19 typical and 22 atypical APDs were temporally and spatially normalized and correlated with reported prescription data. The results demonstrated an increasing global preference for atypical over typical APDs since 2007, with quetiapine, olanzapine, risperidone, and aripiprazole showing the largest search intensities in 2020. Cross-sectional analysis of 122 countries in 2020 showed pronounced differences in atypical/typical APD preferences that correlated with gross domestic product per capita. In conclusion, the investigation provides temporal and spatial assessments of global APD preferences and shows a trend towards atypical APDs, although with a relative preference for typical APDs in low-income countries. Similar data-sourcing methodologies allow for prospective studies of other prescription drugs.
Highlights
Prescription patterns of antipsychotic drugs (APDs) are typically sourced from country-specific data
Google Trendsderived search intensities in 2004-2020 for 19 typical and 22 atypical APDs were normalized to the maximum of haloperidol
For the atypical APDs paliperidone, asenapine, lurasidone, and cariprazine, search intensities increased beginning around the time point of Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval (Fig. 1A; Supplementary Table S1)
Summary
Prescription patterns of antipsychotic drugs (APDs) are typically sourced from country-specific data. A digital pharmacoepidemiological approach was used to investigate APD preferences globally. Available data on worldwide web search intensities in Google for 19 typical and 22 atypical APDs were temporally and spatially normalized and correlated with reported prescription data. The results demonstrated an increasing global preference for atypical over typical APDs since 2007, with quetiapine, olanzapine, risperidone, and aripiprazole showing the largest search intensities in 2020. Studies from the Research on Asian Psychotropic Prescription Patterns (REAP) consortium support differences in clozapine and general APD prescriptions in a number of Asian countries[17,18]. The hypothesis was that the interests of patients, healthcare professionals, researchers, and public for different APDs provided indirect temporal and spatial information about the preferences for and use of specific APDs. In addition, the worldwide cross-sectional APD
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