Detection of dechallenge in spontaneous reporting systems: a comparison of Bayes methods

Dechallenge is a response observed for the reduction or disappearance of adverse drug reactions (ADR) on withdrawal of a drug from a patient. Currently available algorithms to detect dechallenge have limitations. Hence, there is a need to compare available new methods. To detect dechallenge in Spontaneous Reporting Systems, data-mining algorithms like Naive Bayes and Improved Naive Bayes were applied for comparing the performance of the algorithms in terms of accuracy and error. Analyzing the factors of dechallenge like outcome and disease category will help medical practitioners and pharmaceutical industries to determine the reasons for dechallenge in order to take essential steps toward drug safety.

Adverse drug reactions of the year 2011 and 2012 were downloaded from the United States Food and Drug Administration's database.

The outcome of classification algorithms showed that Improved Naive Bayes algorithm outperformed Naive Bayes with accuracy of 90.11% and error of 9.8% in detecting the dechallenge.

Detecting dechallenge for unknown samples are essential for proper prescription. To overcome the issues exposed by Naive Bayes algorithm, Improved Naive Bayes algorithm can be used to detect dechallenge in terms of higher accuracy and minimal error.