Sir,
The study by Tandon and colleagues1 on drug-induced diseases (DIDs) is very interesting. However, we have some comments regarding this study. An important portion of the study population was geriatric patients (54%). Also, the number of females was significantly more than males (1.7 vs 1). As stated by Zopf et al2, advanced age and female gender were important risk factors for DIDs. So, these two factors might have significantly affected the results of this study.
As seen in Table I, there was a significant difference between the number of patients with single disease and co-morbid conditions (P<0.001). It would be important to know how many patient in this study had diabetes mellitus, chronic renal insufficiency, hepatic insufficiency or AIDS. Because, such co-morbidities cause secondary immune deficiencies and patients having these co-morbidities are more susceptible to adverse effects of immunosuppressive medications such as methotrexate, cyclophosphamide and corticosteroids3.
References
- 1.Tandon VR, Khajuria V, Mahajan V, Sharma A, Gillani Z, Mahajan A. Drug-induced diseases (DIDs): An experience of a tertiary care teaching hospital from India. Indian J Med Res. 2015;142:33–9. doi: 10.4103/0971-5916.162093. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 2.Zopf Y, Rabe C, Neubert A, Hahn EG, Dormann H. Risk factors associated with adverse drug reactions following hospital admission: a prospective analysis of 907 patients in two German university hospitals. Drug Saf. 2008;31:789–98. doi: 10.2165/00002018-200831090-00007. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 3.de Marie S. Diseases and drug-related interventions affecting host defence. Eur J Clin Microbiol Infect Dis. 1993;12(Suppl 1):S36–41. doi: 10.1007/BF02389876. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]