A recent study led by a team of scientists from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Massachusetts Institute of Technology has discovered that most prescribed oral medications in the US contain at least one ingredient which can cause adverse reactions. These ingredients are known as inactive ingredients, and they are added to medications to improve the taste, shel-life, absorption and other characteristics.
The team has now discovered that more than 90% of all oral medications experimented contained at least one ingredient that can cause allergic or gastrointestinal symptoms in sensitive individuals. Examples of such ingredients include lactose, peanut oil, chemical dyes and gluten.
Traverso collaborated with biochemical data scientist, Daniel Reker, PhD, the Brigham's executive director of Pharmacy John Fanikos, and others to analyze data on the inactive ingredients found in 42,052 oral medications that contained more than 354,597 inactive ingredients. Inactive ingredients are substances added to drugs during production but are not expected to have a biological effect. Although such ingredients have been tested for safety, reports have suggested that inactive ingredients may have adverse effect on individuals that are allergic.
"What is really striking about this data set is its complication, said Reker. "There are hundreds of different capsules or pills that have the same function using a different combination of inactive ingredients. This highlights how convoluted the possible choices of inactive ingredients are, but also suggests that there is a largely untapped opportunity today to specifically choose the most appropriate version of medication for a patient with unusual sensitivities."
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