Challenges facing drug utilization research in the Latin American region.

PURPOSE: The International Society of Pharmacoepidemiology (ISPE) in collaboration with the Latin America Drug Utilization Research Group (LatAm DURG), the Medicines Utilization Research in Africa (MURIA) group, and the Uppsala Monitoring Center, is leading an initiative to understand challenges to drug utilization research (DUR) in the Latin American (LatAm) and African regions with the goal of communicating results and proposing solutions to these challenges in four scientific publications. The purpose of this first manuscript is to identify the main challenges associated with DUR in the LatAm region. METHODS: Drug utilization (DU) researchers in the LatAm region voluntarily participated in multiple discussions, contributed with local data and reviewed successive drafts and the final manuscript. Additionally, we carried out a literature review to identify the most relevant publications related to DU studies from the LatAm region. RESULTS: Multiple challenges were identified in the LatAm region for DUR including socioeconomic inequality, access to medical care, complexity of the healthcare system, limited investment in research and development, limited institutional and organization resources, language barriers, limited health education and literacy. Further, there is limited use of local DUR data by decision makers particularly in the identification of emerging health needs coming from social and demographic transitions. CONCLUSIONS: The LatAm region faces challenges to DUR which are inherent in the healthcare and political systems, and potential solutions should target changes to the system.

El papel del medico alergista en farmacovigilancia / The role of the alergist in pharmacovigilance

La farmacovigilancia es definida por la OMS como la ciencia y actividades relativas a la deteccion, evaluacion, comprension, y prevencion de los efectos adversos de los medicamentos o de cualquier otro problema relatuvo a ellos. Los medicamentos tiene ubna accion terapeutica, que constituye el beneficio que se espera obtener y tienen tambien riesgos, derivados ya sea de su propia accion farmacologica, o de los excipientes de interacciones con otros farmacos o con alimentos, o riesgos que se producen al interactuar el farmaco con las caracteristicas individuales del paciente(idiosincracia), de la farmacotenia...