openFDA co-occurring adverse events

Question

Is there a way to query openFDA to get the set of co-occurring adverse events that for a given set of 2 or more drugs for a given indication? For example, What are the adverse events that happen in those cases that have "Lung Cancer" indication and both drug A and drug B?

Answer 1

Below is an example of a query against the openFDA drug event API that may be close to or approximate what you are looking to do. My query is offered just as an arbitrary example. You would have to put in the specifics, of course, to find the records you are interested in.

https://api.fda.gov/drug/event.json?search=(patient.drug.drugindication:%22lung+cancer%22)+AND+(patient.drug.openfda.generic_name:%22ALLOPURINOL%22)AND%20(patient.drug.openfda.generic_name:%22PEMBROLIZUMAB%22)&limit=2

This example query will return safety reports from the drug events API where the patient is reported to have taken at least one drug with a drug indication of Lung Cancer and where the patient is reported to have taken both Pembrolizumab and Allopurinol — and possibly other drugs as well. The adverse reactions will be listed in the safety reports.

Note:

• I constructed this example query to search based on generic drug names. You could also search on brand names, NDC, or other fields.
• Pembrolizumab has a drug indication of "NON-SMALL CELL LUNG CANCER"
• Allopurinol has drug indication of “HYPERURICAEMIA”
• This example query is set with a limit of 2 (“&limit=2”) so it will only return two matching records.