Nicholas Tatonetti, a doctoral candidate in Stanford’s biomedical informatics program, discovered an interaction some people may have while on an antidepressant named Paxil and a cholesterol-figthing drug named Pravachol. Side effects notably included high blood sugar.
Tatonetti discovered the connection using his MacBook Pro.
He and his group analyzed over 13,000 reports of adverse reactions reported to the Food and Drug Administration, looking for diabetes-related complications. After the research was done, the two drugs in question were found to have a link.
For further information, patients’ electronic medical records from hospitals affiliated with Stanford, Vanderbilt and Harvard were filtered by the computer to find people with the side effects noted earlier and who had been prescribed both drugs.
Tatonetti’s results have been published online by the journal Clinical Pharmacology & Therapeutics.
Article Via National Public Radio
