People with cancer are specially susceptible to drug interactions because they take multiple drugs to treat: 1) their disease, 2) the side effects of the cancer drugs 3) and their other vigour problems. A new survey of Canadian cancer patients found that potential interactions be most likely to involve the medication for their non-cancer problems, such as the anticoagulant warfarin, antihypertensive drugs, corticosteroids, and anticonvulsants.
The survey, published in the April 18 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, was conducted by Rachel P. Riechelmann, MD, Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto, and colleagues. Questionnaires be given to 405 cancer patients who were delivery systemic anticancer therapy as outpatients. Most of the respondents be women (259) with a median age of 58 years; and most have breast cancer (159).
All were asked almost additional drugs taken contained by the previous four weeks. The survey showed that 27% of the cancer patients reported taking drugs with the potential for interactions. Of those, 9% be classified as major and 77% as moderate. Duplicate prescribing of drugs be infrequent.
This study has a most important limitation, according to its authors, because it be not designed to determine how often these interactions in actual fact resulted in adverse consequences for the cancer patients. Instead, the researchers looked for drug combinations beside the potential for adverse interactions.
Dr. Riechelmann and colleagues say that their results point to the inevitability for studies that will determine the frequency of adverse drug interactions in cancer patients.
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