ArticleJAMIA open2020
Framework for identifying drug repurposing candidates from observational healthcare data.
Article in JAMIA open, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Reporting of Observational Studies Explicitly Aiming to Emulate Randomized Trials: A Systematic Review.JAMA network open · 2023Pooled it
- Target trial emulation studies in oncology: a comprehensive analysis.The oncologist · 2026Article
- AI-based multimodal integration of genomics and electronic health records.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2026Review
- REACT (Real-world Emulated Clinical Trials): A Framework for Drug Repurposing Applied to Osteoporotic Fractures.medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences · 2026Article
- REACT (Real-world Emulated Clinical Trials): A Framework for Drug Repurposing Applied to Osteoporotic Fractures.AMIA Joint Summits on Translational Science proceedings. AMIA Joint Summits on Translational Science · 2026Article
- Harnessing patient health data to benefit individuals and advance research: a focus on rheumatoid arthritis - a narrative review.BMJ digital health & AI · 2026Review
- molIEreVIS: exploring and interpreting the evidence behind drug repurposing predictions.Frontiers in bioinformatics · 2026Article
- A network-based systems genetics framework identifies pathobiology and drug repurposing in Parkinson's disease.NPJ Parkinson's disease · 2025Article
- Single-microglia transcriptomic transition network-based prediction and real-world patient data validation identifies ketorolac as a repurposable drug for Alzheimer's disease.Alzheimer's & dementia : the journal of the Alzheimer's Association · 2025Article
- Identification of Parkinson's disease PACE subtypes and repurposing treatments through integrative analyses of multimodal data.NPJ digital medicine · 2024Article
- High-throughput target trial emulation for Alzheimer's disease drug repurposing with real-world data.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Comparing the effects of four common drug classes on the progression of mild cognitive impairment to dementia using electronic health records.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Article
- Using administrative healthcare data to evaluate drug repurposing opportunities for cancer: the possibility of using beta-blockers to treat breast cancer.Frontiers in pharmacology · 2023Article
- Machine learning for improving high-dimensional proxy confounder adjustment in healthcare database studies: An overview of the current literature.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2022Review
- Computational drug repurposing based on electronic health records: a scoping review.NPJ digital medicine · 2022Article
- A Study on Methodologies of Drug Repositioning Using Biomedical Big Data: A Focus on Diabetes Mellitus.Endocrinology and metabolism (Seoul, Korea) · 2022Article
- Artificial intelligence for COVID-19: battling the pandemic with computational intelligence.Intelligent medicine · 2022Review
- Advances in the computational landscape for repurposed drugs against COVID-19.Drug discovery today · 2021Review
- The use of real-world data in drug repurposing.Translational and clinical pharmacology · 2021Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveObservational medical databases, such as electronic health records and insurance claims, track the healthcare trajectory of millions of individuals. These databases provide real-world longitudinal information on large cohorts of patients and their medication prescription history. We present an easy-to-customize framework that systematically analyzes such databases to identify new indications for on-market prescription drugs. MATERIALS AND
methodsOur framework provides an interface for defining study design parameters and extracting patient cohorts, disease-related outcomes, and potential confounders in observational databases. It then applies causal inference methodology to emulate hundreds of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for prescribed drugs, while adjusting for confounding and selection biases. After correcting for multiple testing, it outputs the estimated effects and their statistical significance in each database.
resultsWe demonstrate the utility of the framework in a case study of Parkinson's disease (PD) and evaluate the effect of 259 drugs on various PD progression measures in two observational medical databases, covering more than 150 million patients. The results of these emulated trials reveal remarkable agreement between the two databases for the most promising candidates. DISCUSSION: Estimating drug effects from observational data is challenging due to data biases and noise. To tackle this challenge, we integrate causal inference methodology with domain knowledge and compare the estimated effects in two separate databases.
conclusionOur framework enables systematic search for drug repurposing candidates by emulating RCTs using observational data. The high level of agreement between separate databases strongly supports the identified effects.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What Socratic holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.