Pharmacoepidemiology

Association of Terazosin, Doxazosin, or Alfuzosin Use and Risk of Dementia With Lewy Bodies in Men

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Terazosin, doxazosin, and alfuzosin (Tz/Dz/Az) are α-1 adrenergic receptor antagonists that also bind to and activate a key adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-producing enzyme in glycolysis. It is hypothesized that the increase in energy availability in the brain may slow or prevent neurodegeneration, potentially by reducing the accumulation of alpha-synuclein. Recent work has suggested a potentially neuroprotective effect of the use of Tz/Dz/Az in Parkinson disease in both animal and human studies. We investigated the neuroprotective effects of Tz/Dz/Az in a closely related disease, dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB).

METHODS

We used a new-user active comparator design in the Merative Marketscan database to identify men with no history of DLB who were newly started on Tz/Dz/Az or 2 comparator medications. Our comparator medications were other drugs commonly used to treat benign prostatic hyperplasia that do not increase ATP: the α-1 adrenergic receptor antagonist tamsulosin or 5α-reductase inhibitor (5ARI). We matched the cohorts on propensity scores and duration of follow-up. We followed up the matched cohorts forward to estimate the hazard of developing DLB using Cox proportional hazards regression.

RESULTS

Men who were newly started on Tz/Dz/Az had a lower hazard of developing DLB than matched men taking tamsulosin (n = 242,716, 728,256 person-years, hazard ratio [HR] 0.60, 95% CI 0.50-0.71) or 5ARI (n = 130,872, 399,316 person-years, HR 0.73, 95% CI 0.57-0.93). while the hazard in men taking tamsulosin was similar to that of men taking 5ARI (n = 159,596, 482,280 person-years, HR 1.17, 95% CI 0.96-1.42). These results were robust to several sensitivity analyses.

DISCUSSION

We find an association in men who are taking Tz/Dz/Az and a lower hazard of DLB compared with similar men taking other medications. When combined with the literature of Tz/Dz/Az on Parkinson disease, our findings suggest that glycolysis-enhancing drugs may be broadly protective in neurodegenerative synucleinopathies. A future randomized trial is required to assess these associations for causality.

CLASSIFICATION OF EVIDENCE

This study provides Class III evidence that Tz/Dz/Az use reduces the rate of developing DLB in adult men.

Design, implementation, and inferential issues associated with clinical trials that rely on data in electronic medical records: a narrative review

Real world evidence is now accepted by authorities charged with assessing the benefits and harms of new therapies. Clinical trials based on real world evidence are much less expensive than randomized clinical trials that do not rely on "real world evidence" such as contained in electronic health records (EHR). Consequently, we can expect an increase in the number of reports of these types of trials, which we identify here as 'EHR-sourced trials.' 'In this selected literature review, we discuss the various designs and the ethical issues they raise. EHR-sourced trials have the potential to improve/increase common data elements and other aspects of the EHR and related systems. Caution is advised, however, in drawing causal inferences about the relationships among EHR variables. Nevertheless, we anticipate that EHR-CTs will play a central role in answering research and regulatory questions.

Effectiveness of spironolactone dispensation in reducing weekly alcohol use: a retrospective high-dimensional propensity score-matched cohort study

There is a need to increase the armamentarium of pharmacotherapies for alcohol use disorder (AUD). Recent research suggests that mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) antagonism via spironolactone may represent a novel pharmacological treatment for AUD. We conducted a pharmacoepidemiologic retrospective cohort study (June 1, 2014 to May 31, 2018) to examine whether spironolactone dispensation (≥90 continuous days), for any indication, is associated with changes in weekly alcohol use about 6 months later. We compared 523 spironolactone-treated adults and 2305 untreated adults, matched on high-dimensional propensity scores created from a set of predefined (sociodemographic and health characteristics, diagnoses, and service utilization) and empirical electronic health record-derived covariates. The sample was 57% female and 27% non-White with a mean age of 59.2 years (SD = 19.3). Treated patients reduced their weekly alcohol use by 3.50 drinks (95% CI = -4.22, -2.79), while untreated patients reduced by 2.74 drinks (95% CI = -3.22, -2.26), yielding a significant difference of 0.76 fewer drinks (95% CI = -1.43, -0.11). Among those who drank >7 drinks/week at baseline, treated patients, compared to untreated patients, reported a greater reduction in weekly alcohol use by 4.18 drinks (95% CI = -5.38, -2.97), while there was no significant difference among those who drank less. There was a significant dose-response relationship between spironolactone dosage and change in drinks/week. Pending additional evidence on its safety and efficacy in individuals with AUD, spironolactone (and MR blockade, at large) may hold promise as a pharmacotherapy for AUD.

Use of real-world evidence in translational pharmacology research

Real-world evidence (RWE) refers to observational data gathered outside the formalism of randomized controlled trials, in real life situations, on marketed drugs. While clinical trials are the gold standards to demonstrate the efficacy and tolerability of a medicinal product, the generalizability of their results to actual use in real-life is limited by the biases induced by the very nature of clinical trials; indeed, the patients included in the trials may differ from actual users because of their concomitant diseases or treatments, or other factors excluding them from the trials. Clinical researchers and pharmaceutical industries have hence become increasingly interested in expanding and integrating RWE into clinical research, by capitalizing on the exponential growth in access to data from electronic health records, claims databases, electronic devices, software or mobile applications, registries embedded in clinical practice and social media. Meanwhile, applications of RWE may also be used for drug discovery and repurposing, for clinical developments and post-marketing studies. The aim of this review is to provide our opinion regarding the use of RWE in translational research, including non-clinical and clinical pharmacology research, at the different step of drugs development use.

Patterns of quadruple therapy use including bismuth for Helicobacter pylori eradication: A cohort study in the French national claims database

BACKGROUND

Quadruple therapy using a single capsule formulation of bismuth, metronidazole and tetracycline (BMT; Pylera®), associated with omeprazole for the eradication of Helicobacter pylori, represents the reintroduction of bismuth in France after 40 years.

OBJECTIVE

To describe the real-life patterns of use of BMT following a request from the French health authorities.

METHODS

Patients with a first BMT dispensing (index date, ID), with one year of data before and after ID, were identified in the French nationwide claims database 1/97 sample. Misuse of BMT was defined as dispensing>1 pack of BMT at ID or absence of a diagnostic test in the preceding year.

RESULTS

In total, 540 patients were included. Prescribers were gastroenterologists (n=243; 45%) and general practitioners (n=160; 30%). A proton pump inhibitor was co-dispensed to 504 patients (96%). Ten patients (2%) had contraindications to BMT. Fifty-nine patients (11%) met the misuse criteria: ten (2%) were dispensed>1 pack of BMT and 49 (9%) had not had a diagnostic test for H. pylori in the previous year. During follow-up, 27 patients (5%) required retreatment (treatment failure).

CONCLUSION

In this real-life study, most patients were dispensed only one pack of BMT, consistent with recommendations. Misuse related principally to the absence of prior diagnostic test for H. pylori.

The quality of research with real-world evidence

Most of the medical practice has not been proven by controlled clinical trials, and there are no plans to conduct such trials in order to decrease clinician uncertainty. This happens partly due to the difficulty of making designs with scientific and ethical validity, the costs of this type of research and the time required to generate results, which can be several years. Clinical trials do not have the capability to generate information that allows to make decisions in some sectors of clinical care and public health, such as when an epidemic occurs. Therefore, medical science is based on observational studies, past practices and therapeutic tradition (1). Observation of clinical data that have defined a clinical behavior precedes the clinical trial. The knowledge about scurvy, the fact that this pathology is considered a nutritional deficiency and its treatment with citrus fruits, originated thanks to the collection of clinical data on sailors, soldiers and prisoners of the British Crown in the 18th and 19th centuries (2). This clinical information, which was collected uniformly and served to produce new knowledge, is what is now known as Real World Data (RWD). A modern definition of RWD would be one that talks about data obtained by any non-interventionist methodology that is collected prospectively and retrospectively from observations of routine clinical practice, and which comes from various sources including data from patients, doctors, hospitals, payers, social data, etc (3).