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The counts by date range do not seem to add up. For example, the following two queries

https://api.fda.gov/drug/event.json?search=patient.drug.openfda.brand_name:"ambien"+AND+serious:1+AND+patient.patientsex:1+AND+[2013-01-01+TO+2014-01-01]&count=patient.reaction.reactionmeddrapt.exact&limit=10

and

https://api.fda.gov/drug/event.json?search=patient.drug.openfda.brand_name:"ambien"+AND+serious:1+AND+patient.patientsex:1+AND+[2012-01-01+TO+2013-01-01]&count=patient.reaction.reactionmeddrapt.exact&limit=10

return 46 and 137 for FATIGUE, respectively. However, a query that combines those two date ranges into one, namely

https://api.fda.gov/drug/event.json?search=patient.drug.openfda.brand_name:"ambien"+AND+serious:1+AND+patient.patientsex:1+AND+[2012-01-01+TO+2014-01-01]&count=patient.reaction.reactionmeddrapt.exact&limit=10

returns 139 for FATIGUE, instead of 183.

Is this a real issue or a syntax error in the query?

Note that a query avoiding the first day of 2014 (to avoid overlap) does not work at all (I get back "No matches found!")

https://api.fda.gov/drug/event.json?search=patient.drug.openfda.brand_name:"ambien"+AND+serious:1+AND+patient.patientsex:1+AND+[2013-01-01+TO+2013-12-31]&count=patient.reaction.reactionmeddrapt.exact&limit=10

This seems to be an outright issue with how dates are handled.

Ron

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  • One issue seems to be that you are not specifying receivedate for your data query. For example, try the following instead of your fourth (and last) URL example: https://api.fda.gov/drug/event.json?search=patient.drug.openfda.brand_name:%22ambien%22+AND+serious:1+AND+patient.patientsex:1+AND+receivedate:[2013-01-01+TO+2013-12-31]&count=patient.reaction.reactionmeddrapt.exact&limit=10
    – Mark Silverberg
    Jun 9, 2014 at 19:02

1 Answer 1

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Mark is correct - you need to specify the date field that you want to search on. receivedate tends to work best.

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  • It appears receivedate only accepts a single date, as in api.fda.gov/drug/… When I submit Mark's suggestion I get { "error": { "code": "BAD_REQUEST", "message": "" } }
    – medidatian
    Jun 10, 2014 at 4:07
  • It looks like Mark's suggestion doesn't work if you copy and paste due to encoding errors. Additionally, you need to wrap your date ranges in brackets. I used api.fda.gov/drug/… and got results as expected.
    – Sean Herron
    Jun 10, 2014 at 4:50
  • It was a cut and paste issue. The hyphens were non-ascii ([2013-01-01+TO+20%E2%80%8C%E2%80%8B13-12-31]). This solved the issue and the results I am getting are now accurate. Thanks!
    – medidatian
    Jun 10, 2014 at 14:43
  • Actually, on second thought, those are the UTF-8 sequences for "ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER" (E2 80 8C) and "ZERO WIDTH SPACE" (E2 80 8B). They are invisible in the URL string but the service does not tolerate them.
    – medidatian
    Jun 10, 2014 at 14:56

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