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Purpose: Adverse drug events (ADEs) are common health problems worldwide. Developing a prediction rule to identify patients at high risk for ADEs to prevent or ameliorate ADEs could be one attractive strategy., Methods: The Japan Adverse Drug Events (JADE) study is a prospective cohort study including 3459 participants. We randomly divided the JADE study cohort into the derivation and the validation sets, using an automated random digit generator. We calculated the probabilities of ADE in each patient in the validation set after applying the prediction rule developed in the derivation set. The actual incidence and area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) in the validation set were compared with those in the derivation set to evaluate the prognostic ability of our developed prediction rule., Results: The developed prediction rule included eight independent risk factors. Each patient in the validation set was classified into three categories of risk for the ADEs according to the probability of ADEs calculated by the developed prediction rule. Eight percent (137/1730) of patients in the validation set fell into the high-risk group, and 35% of this group (48/137) had at least one ADE. The AUC in the validation set was 0.63 (95%CI 0.60-0.66), and the performance to discriminate the probability of ADE was similar (p = 0.08) compared with that in the derivation set., Conclusions: This prediction rule had the modest predictive ability and could help physicians and other healthcare professionals to make an estimation of patients at high risk for ADEs., (Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Purpose: The elderly receive many medications which may have adverse effects. Little evidence is available about the epidemiology of potentially inappropriate medications being prescribed to the elderly in Japan as defined by the Beers criteria, or whether or not these medications result in harm when used in this population., Methods: We conducted a prospective cohort study of patients aged ≥65 years who were admitted to three acute care hospitals in Japan. Trained research nurses followed up patients from randomly selected wards and collected data about their medications and all potential adverse drug events (ADEs). Two independent reviewers evaluated all the data. The use of potentially inappropriate medications and their effects on patients were identified using the updated Beers criteria., Results: A total of 2155 elderly patients were eligible; 56.1% received at least one drug listed in the Beers criteria (BL drug). The rates of BL drug prescriptions were 103.8 per 100 admissions and 53.6 [DOSAGE ERROR CORRECTED] per 1000 patient-days, and the incidence rate of ADEs related to BL drugs was 1.7 per 100 BL drug prescriptions. Among patients aged ≥65 years, relatively younger patients (p = 0.0002) and those with less complications (p = 0.04) were likely to be prescribed BL drugs., Conclusions: Although BL drugs were frequently prescribed to elderly Japanese inpatients, the incidence of related ADEs appeared infrequent. These data suggest that re-evaluation of the appropriateness of the Beers criteria is needed before they are used in Japan and other nations to assess quality or for decision support., (Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.)

Background: Sudden death is common in chronic heart failure (CHF). Risk stratification is the first step for primary prevention., Aim: To evaluate the use of risk markers for estimating sudden death risk., Methods and Results: We prospectively examined 680 stable patients with CHF. Risk markers were evaluated using the Cox's proportional hazard model in a stepwise manner. Ejection fraction <30%, left ventricular end-diastolic diameter >60 mm, brain natriuretic peptide >200 pg/ml, non-sustained ventricular tachycardia, and diabetes were significantly associated with increased risk of sudden death. When the number of risk markers were included as co-variables, only "number of risk markers >or=3'' entered the model (hazard ratio 8.95, 95% confidence interval 4.57-17.52), while the effects of individual markers did not enter the model. The annual mortality from sudden death was 11% in patients with 3 or more risk markers and 1.4% in patients with 2 or less., Conclusions: Rather than particular risk markers, the number of accumulated risk markers was a more powerful predictor for sudden death in patients with CHF. The number of risk markers could be useful for risk stratification of sudden death.