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Consumers of natural health products: natural-born pharmacovigilantes?
BACKGROUND: Natural health products (NHPs), such as herbal medicines and vitamins, are widely available over-the-counter and are often purchased by consumers without advice from a healthcare provider. This study examined how consumers respond when they believe they have experienced NHP-related adver...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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BioMed Central
2010
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2847952/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20184759 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-10-8 |
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author | Walji, Rishma Boon, Heather Barnes, Joanne Austin, Zubin Welsh, Sandy Baker, G Ross |
author_facet | Walji, Rishma Boon, Heather Barnes, Joanne Austin, Zubin Welsh, Sandy Baker, G Ross |
author_sort | Walji, Rishma |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Natural health products (NHPs), such as herbal medicines and vitamins, are widely available over-the-counter and are often purchased by consumers without advice from a healthcare provider. This study examined how consumers respond when they believe they have experienced NHP-related adverse drug reactions (ADRs) in order to determine how to improve current safety monitoring strategies. METHODS: Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve consumers who had experienced a self-identified NHP-related ADR. Key emergent themes were identified and coded using content analysis techniques. RESULTS: Consumers were generally not comfortable enough with their conventional health care providers to discuss their NHP-related ADRs. Consumers reported being more comfortable discussing NHP-related ADRs with personnel from health food stores, friends or family with whom they had developed trusted relationships. No one reported their suspected ADR to Health Canada and most did not know this was possible. CONCLUSION: Consumers generally did not report their suspected NHP-related ADRs to healthcare providers or to Health Canada. Passive reporting systems for collecting information on NHP-related ADRs cannot be effective if consumers who experience NHP-related ADRs do not report their experiences. Healthcare providers, health food store personnel, manufacturers and other stakeholders also need to take responsibility for reporting ADRs in order to improve current pharmacovigilance of NHPs. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2847952 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2010 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-28479522010-04-01 Consumers of natural health products: natural-born pharmacovigilantes? Walji, Rishma Boon, Heather Barnes, Joanne Austin, Zubin Welsh, Sandy Baker, G Ross BMC Complement Altern Med Research article BACKGROUND: Natural health products (NHPs), such as herbal medicines and vitamins, are widely available over-the-counter and are often purchased by consumers without advice from a healthcare provider. This study examined how consumers respond when they believe they have experienced NHP-related adverse drug reactions (ADRs) in order to determine how to improve current safety monitoring strategies. METHODS: Qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve consumers who had experienced a self-identified NHP-related ADR. Key emergent themes were identified and coded using content analysis techniques. RESULTS: Consumers were generally not comfortable enough with their conventional health care providers to discuss their NHP-related ADRs. Consumers reported being more comfortable discussing NHP-related ADRs with personnel from health food stores, friends or family with whom they had developed trusted relationships. No one reported their suspected ADR to Health Canada and most did not know this was possible. CONCLUSION: Consumers generally did not report their suspected NHP-related ADRs to healthcare providers or to Health Canada. Passive reporting systems for collecting information on NHP-related ADRs cannot be effective if consumers who experience NHP-related ADRs do not report their experiences. Healthcare providers, health food store personnel, manufacturers and other stakeholders also need to take responsibility for reporting ADRs in order to improve current pharmacovigilance of NHPs. BioMed Central 2010-02-25 /pmc/articles/PMC2847952/ /pubmed/20184759 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-10-8 Text en Copyright ©2010 Walji et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | Research article Walji, Rishma Boon, Heather Barnes, Joanne Austin, Zubin Welsh, Sandy Baker, G Ross Consumers of natural health products: natural-born pharmacovigilantes? |
title | Consumers of natural health products: natural-born pharmacovigilantes? |
title_full | Consumers of natural health products: natural-born pharmacovigilantes? |
title_fullStr | Consumers of natural health products: natural-born pharmacovigilantes? |
title_full_unstemmed | Consumers of natural health products: natural-born pharmacovigilantes? |
title_short | Consumers of natural health products: natural-born pharmacovigilantes? |
title_sort | consumers of natural health products: natural-born pharmacovigilantes? |
topic | Research article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2847952/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20184759 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6882-10-8 |
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