Annotating off-label drug usage from unconventional sources
Open accessAbstract
ABSTRACT Physicians have the freedom to prescribe medicines outside the list of approved indications, to treat mild to life-threatening clinical conditions and diseases, particularly when conventional treatments fail or are lacking. Off-label drug usage is more frequently observed in specific populations not often represented in clinical trials, e.g., pediatric, geriatric, or pregnant patients. Despite conflicting reports on patient safety, exploring alternative treatment options in medical practice promotes innovation and extends the applicability of current medicines. This process can be significantly improved by properly documenting and discussing off-label usage. This paper aims to document off-label uses discussed in less conventional sources, such as the r/medicine Reddit subforum. We identified 66 “Reddit off-label uses” (ROLUs) not captured in our reference database, DrugCentral ( https://drugcentral.org/ ), for a set of 40 drugs. These drugs are associated with 209 on-label drug indications (INDs) and 58 “non-Reddit” off-label uses (NROLUs). Most of these drugs are relatively ‘old’ (approved before 2000) and act on the nervous system, many with psychiatric applications. However, ROLUs are distinct from INDs and NROLUs. An automated scientific literature query showed that 90% of the ROLUs are linked to 4 scientific publications or more, with 80% linked to at least 10. A further search in the clinical trials database revealed 46 ROLUs mentioned; 39 are in phase 3 trials. These results indicate that most off-label uses discussed on the Reddit forum are supported by scientific evidence. We conclude that medical social media channels can provide a valuable source of alternative drug applications and should be scientifically explored and evaluated in the future.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
DrugCentral 2023 adds a set of well-documented off-label uses retrieved from the Reddit medical forum.
“we add a set of well-documented off-label uses retrieved from a rather unconventional source, the Reddit medical forum (19).”
From DrugCentral 2023 extends human clinical data and integrates veterinary drugs (2023) · cites this paper as [19]
The new off-label use data set was documented using automatic searches in scientific literature and clinical trials data and compared to 209 approved indications and other OLUs indexed by DrugCentral for the same 40 drugs.
“The data set was documented thoroughly using automatic searches in the scientific literature and clinical trials data and compared to 209 approved indications and other off-label uses (OLUs) indexed by DrugCentral (for the same 40 drugs) (19).”
From DrugCentral 2023 extends human clinical data and integrates veterinary drugs (2023) · cites this paper as [19]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
The citation lists haven’t been fetched yet
References 18 · Cited by 4
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Xu P, Ji L, Tian S, Li F. Clinical effects of tanshinone IIA sodium sulfonate combined with trimetazidine and levocarnitine in the treatment of AVMC and its effects on serum TNF-α, IL-18 and IL-35. Exp Ther Med. 2018;16(5):4070-4074.
- Complex regional pain syndrome type 1. Some treatments assessed versus placebo, limited efficacy. Prescrire Int. 2009;18(104):267-271.
- Authors
- Avram, S., Halip, L., Curpan, R., Borota, A., Bora, A., & Oprea, T. I.
- Affiliations
- Romanian Academy (RO)
- Roivant Sciences (United States) (US)
- Corresponding author
- Oprea, Tudor I
- Venue
- medRxiv
- Publisher
- openRxiv
- Published
- 2022-09-09
- OpenAlex
- W4295048769
- Cited by
- 4
- References
- 18
- Citations by year
- 2024: 2 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1
- Type
- posted content
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by-nc-nd
- Locations
- medRxiv (acceptedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- Funders
- Pfizer
- AstraZeneca
- Sanofi
- Merck KGaA
- Merz Pharmaceuticals
- National Institutes of Health (CA224370)
- Genentech
- National Cancer Institute (U24CA224370)
- Common Fund
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics › Pharmacology › Pharmaceutical industry and healthcare
- Life Sciences › Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics › Toxicology › Pharmacovigilance and Adverse Drug Reactions
- Social Sciences › Health › Social Media in Health Education
- Keywords
- off-label drug use, Reddit, drug repurposing, psychiatric medication, nervous system drugs, clinical trial evidence, evidence-based prescribing
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
