Optimising methodology for the elicitation of participant-reported data relating to drug safety in resource poor settings

In addition to treating symptomatic patients, malaria prevention and elimination requires giving antimalarial drugs to asymptomatic or uninfected individuals. This shifts the harm-benefit balance and heightens the importance of accurately defining drug safety. Large data sets, including those pooled from multiple sources, are needed to understand uncommon adverse drug reactions. Interpreting individual studies , comparisons between studies and pooled datasets can be compromised, however, by inadequate or varied methods of safety data collection. Specifically, questioning methods may influence participants' reports of medical history, adverse events (AEs) and non-study medications. A Cochrane systematic review synthesised literature on research comparing methods for eliciting AEs from trial participants . A global online survey investigated how antimalarial researchers collect these data, and mixed-methods were used to identify barriers to accurate and complete reporting in South African and Tanzanian antimalarial-antiretroviral drug interaction trials. Focus group discussions were conducted in Ghana, Kenya and Uganda with women in a drugs exposure pregnancy registry to examine barriers to reporting at antenatal clinics, and how they might be overcome. The review included thirty-three studies in various therapeutic areas showing that more specific questioning increases the number of AEs reported by trial participants. Survey responses of 52 antimalarial researchers in 25 countries evidenced a range of methods to obtain AEs, medical histories and non-study drug reports. Qualitative data revealed that the trial context is influential and that detailed questioning facilitated participants' recognition and consideration of what to report. Non-reporting is due to forgetting, not knowing drug names, considering which information is relevant or significant to themselves or trial/healthcare workers, the potential consequences of reporting, and perceiving verbal responses inferior to what blood test results can show. Pregnant women's improved relationship with antenatal staff facilitated information-sharing and registry tools helped overcome problems with recall and naming of medicines. This project provides evidence of the substantial impact of different questioning methods on safety assessments . The results should contribute to developing a framework for researchers when planning globally-relevant, yet context-specific, antimalarial drug safety data collection strategies, and enhance efforts to pool data from multiple sources.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Division of Clinical Pharmacology

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Allen, Elizabeth

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Barnes, Karen I
• Chandler, Clare I R
• Atuyambe, Lynn M

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/16532

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/16532