Comparison of potential drug-drug interactions with metabolic syndrome medications detected by two databases

Abstract

This is an open access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. Background Drug-drug interactions (DDIs) are one of the most common drug-related problems. Recently, electronic databases have drug interaction tools to search for potential DDIs, for example, Micromedex and Drugs.com. However, Micromedex and Drugs.com have different abilities in detecting potential DDIs, and this might cause misinformation to occur between patients and health care providers. Methods and findings The aim of this study was to compare the ability of Micromedex and Drugs.com to detect potential DDIs with metabolic syndrome medications using the drug list from the U-central database, King Chulalongkorn Memorial Hospital in April 2019. There were 90 available drugs for the treatment of the metabolic syndrome and its associated complications, but six were not found in the Micromedex and Drugs.com databases; therefore, only 84 items were used in the present study. There were 1,285 potential DDI pairs found by the two databases. Micromedex reported DDIs of 724 pairs, while, Drugs.com reported 1,122 pairs. For the severity of the potential DDI reports, the same severity occurred between the two databases of 481 pairs (37.43%) and a different severity for 804 pairs (62.57%). Conclusion Drugs.com had a higher sensitivity to detect potential DDIs by approximately 1.5-fold, but Micromedex supplied more informative documentation for the severity classification. Therefore, pharmacists should use at least two databases to evaluate potential DDIs and determine the appropriate drug regimens for physician communications and patient consultations.