In the Basque Country, five people a day suffer from adverse drug reactions

Since the late 1980s, the Basque Country Pharmacovigilance Authority (UFVPV) has been responsible for assessing notifications of suspected adverse effects caused by medicines. This body, subordinate to the Basque Government Ministry of Health, is responsible for assessing doubts about the effectiveness of medicines sent by health professionals, citizens and the pharmaceutical industry.

In addition, this year the Ministry of Health signed an agreement with Basque pharmacies to create a sentinel network to monitor the safety of these medical products.

The number of suspected cases received rose to 1,814 last year, compared to 1,347 reported in 2022. That means adverse drug reactions have risen by 34.7% in the last year, after these side effects had already increased by 68% two years ago. This does not include episodes caused by Covid vaccines, of which there were 49 in 2023, bringing the total number of suspected cases to 1,883.

Health explains this increase by a combination of factors. On the one hand, the coronavirus immunization campaign aimed at encouraging the reporting of vaccine side effects “may have led to increased awareness of drug safety.” On the other hand, “the introduction of new tools to facilitate notification of health care workers.” The department also notes that specialists working in the pharmacovigilance department are “actively searching” for cases of adverse drug reactions.

In terms of territory, more than half of adverse reactions occurred in Biscay. More precisely, six out of ten. In Gipuzkoa, a total of 418 cases of adverse drug reactions were registered, 24% of which were registered last year in the Basque Country. This is seven episodes more than recorded in 2022.

What does not change is that women continue to suffer more from these adverse reactions. According to the UFVPV report, six out of every ten registered suspicious cases are concentrated there. This is a general trend that has been repeated in recent years and is condemned by doctors and experts, given that often the treatment does not take into account the size of women’s organs or their fat deposits, which is why patients suffer more often from side effects. consequences.

These adverse events are not age-dependent. Although most of them occur in adults and the over-65 population – they account for 96.5% of all suspected cases – the youngest people are not immune to some drug reactions. The 2023 yearbook includes 21 events in adolescents, thirty in children and even 13 episodes in infants, six boys and seven girls.

The Ministry of Health acknowledges that “different patients may react differently to the same medicine, so it is very difficult to predict whether a patient will experience any adverse reactions.” In this sense, the vast majority of cases reported in 2023 were resolved without any particular difficulty, but 459 cases were classified as serious according to the parameters set by the EU. All this meant that, for example, 89 patients required hospitalization to recover from the drug, and three were left with a disability or permanent disability.

However, three were the most serious cases in which the patient died, although Salud clarifies that “they were well documented” and that the assessment “does not prove or disprove causation or quantify the contribution of the drug to the development of adverse reactions.”