Adverse drug reactions as cause of admission to hospital

Editor—According to the paper by Pirmohamed et al,¹ two of the drugs or drug classes implicated in adverse drug reactions are aspirin and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Both these are freely available over the counter, without the need of a prescription by a qualified doctor. This paper would have been rather stronger if it had attempted to identify whether the drugs that have been blamed had actually ever been prescribed by a doctor or had been bought over the counter. Unfortunately, the result of the publication of the paper has been a stream of rather alarmist editorials, not to mention headlines in the national media.