How do I query for a field with a single quote or apostrophe? e.g. "CROHN'S DISEASE"

Question

I want to list all drugs that have "CROHN'S DISEASE" or "CROHN^S DISEASE" as drugindication:

http://api.fda.gov/drug/event.json?search=patient.drug.drugindication.exact:%22CROHN'S+DISEASE%22&count=patient.drug.openfda.brand_name.exact&limit=100

If you list Humira's drug indications

http://api.fda.gov/drug/event.json?search=patient.drug.openfda.brand_name.exact:%22HUMIRA%22&count=patient.drug.drugindication.exact&limit=100

Crohn's Disease shows up as a very common drug indication for Humira. Now I want to find other drugs that also have Crohn's Disease as a drugindication. How should I query for this? I don't believe it is currently possible.

Answer 1

First of all, in your Humira drug indications response, there is some data quality idiosyncracies because I see "CROHN'S DISEASE" and CROHN^S DISEASE as possible values of patient.drug.drugindication.exact.

Unfortunately, this has been a known issue since 2014 (at https://github.com/FDA/openfda/issues/29) and there isn't a fix just yet.

For the time being, you could do a fuzzy-ish search like the following:

http://api.fda.gov/drug/event.json?search=patient.drug.drugindication:%22CROHN%22

which should match both of the permutations of Crohn's disease above.