Prescription profile of pyridostigmine use in a population of patients with myasthenia gravis

Abstract

We determined the pyridostigmine prescription pattern in a population of patients with myasthenia gravis (MG). A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted by using a prescription database of 3.5 million individuals from which patients who had been diagnosed with MG and for whom pyridostigmine had been prescribed were selected. A total of 306 outpatients with MG were found, and 258 were receiving pyridostigmine (mean age 53.0 ± 18.0 years). The calculated prevalence of MG was 86.7 cases per million persons. Monotherapy was used by 53.1% of the patients, prednisolone was used by 21.7%, and 30.2% used other immunomodulators. Medications for other comorbidities were taken by 74.8% of the patients, and 43.4% had prescriptions that could potentially trigger worsening symptoms. Pyridostigmine is being prescribed at doses close to the defined daily doses predominantly as monotherapy. A high proportion of patients were also prescribed a medication that could aggravate their condition, including some that can trigger a myasthenic crisis. Muscle Nerve 56: 1041-1046, 2017.

Myasthenia Gravis in Poland: National Healthcare Database Epidemiological Study

“…We report the PR of symptomatic MG of 22.65 per 100,000. It is higher than that in previous studies using pyridostigmine databases, with PR ranging from 8.36 to 13.1 per 100,000 [6, 7, 14, 25, 26], but within the range of those reported in the epidemiological MG studies using other case collection methods (between 7.7 and 32.0 per 100,000) [5, 11, 15, 17, 18, 23, 27-30]. It may reflect a trend towards higher PRs, noted in most recent studies.…”

Availability of secondary healthcare data for conducting pharmacoepidemiology studies in Colombia: A systematic review

“…Among these, 351 articles were excluded after title screening and the abstract of the 784 remaining papers was assessed. Finally, 461 publications were excluded following the eligibility criteria and thus, 323 articles that had interpretable data and fulfilled the eligibility criteria were used for data extraction…”

“…A pharmacy dispensing company (Audifarma SA) was identified in the SLR as the most commonly used database for RWE 34,42,61,63,72,73,94‐98,100‐109,111‐115,117,118,120,122‐131,134‐141,163,168,242,301,310 . It contains demographic data, diagnosis by ICD‐10, and drug dispensation records coded by the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) classification, which can be used to identify comorbidities, drug‐to‐drug interactions, medication errors, adverse events, and calculate adherence rates.…”

Anticholinesterases

“…The effect of the drug starts in 15-30 min, reaches maximum in 1-2 hours, and lasts 3-4 hours or longer. Pyridostigmine bromide, used for the treatment of MG and for protection against exposure to nerve agents, is a carbamate-derived reversible AChE inhibitor [23][24][25]. Due to the quaternary amine structure, it is relatively weakly absorbed from the gastrointestinal system.…”