Pharamcovigilance

Pharmacovigilance  the science related to detection , assessment , understanding and prevention of adverse effect , particularly long term and short term side effect of medicines.

Generally speaking, Pharmacovigilance is the collecting, monitoring, searching and evaluating information from healthcare providers and patients on the adverse effect of medication, biological products, herbalism and traditional medicines with a view to:

1)     Identified new information about hazards associated with medicines

2)     Preventing harm to patients

The etymological routes are: pharmacon (Greek), “Drugs”, and Vigilare (Latin), “to keep away or alert, to keep watch”.

Pharmacovigilance is particular is concerned with adverse drug reaction, or ADRs, which are prescribed as: “A response to a drug which is noxious and unintended, and which occurs at doses normally used for the prophylaxis, diagnosis or therapy of disease, or for the modification of physiological function “. Pharmacovigilance is gaining importance for doctors and scientists as the number of stories in the mass media of drug recalls increases.

                                                             

Because Clinical trials involve several thousand patient at most ; less common side effects and ADRs Are often unknown at the time drug enters the market, Even very sever ADRs , Such as liver damage , are often undetected because study population are small. Post marketing Pharmacovigilance uses tools such as data mining and investigation of case reports to identify the relationship between drugs and ADRs.

By Sourabh Kushwah (B.Sc. Bio.tech.) and Vishal Kushwah (B.sc. Microbiology)