A trajectory-informed model for detecting drug-drug-host interaction from real-world data.

objectiveAdverse drug event (ADE) is a significant challenge to public health. Since data mining methods have been developed to identify signals of drug-drug interaction-induced (DDI-induced) or drug-host interaction-induced (DHI-induced) ADE from real-world data, we aim to develop a new method to detect adverse drug-drug interaction with a special awareness on patient characteristics.

methodsWe developed a trajectory-informed model (TIM) to identify signals of adverse DDI with a special awareness on patient characteristics (i.e., drug-drug-host interaction [DDHI]). We also proposed a study design based on an optimal selection of within-subject and between-subjects controls for detecting ADEs from real-world data. We analyzed a large-scale US administrative claims data and conducted a simulation study.

resultsIn administrative claims data analysis, we developed optimally matched case-control datasets for potential ADEs including acute kidney injury and gastrointestinal bleeding. We identified that an optimal selection of controls had a higher AUC compared to traditional designs for ADE detection (AUCs: 0.79-0.80 vs. 0.56-0.76). We observed that TIM detected more signals than reference methods (odds ratios: 1.13-3.18, P < 0.01), and found that 36 % of all signals generated by TIM were DDHI signals. In a simulation study, we demonstrated that TIM had an empirical false discovery rate (FDR) less than the desired value of 0.05, as well as > 1.4-fold higher probabilities of detection of DDHI signals than reference methods.

conclusionsTIM had a high probability to identify signals of adverse DDI and DDHI in a high-throughput ADE mining while controlling false positive rate. A significant portion of drug-drug combinations were associated with an increased risk of ADEs only in specific patient subpopulations. Optimal selection of within-subject and between-subjects controls could improve the performance of ADE data mining.