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A PSO/ACO Approach to Knowledge Discovery in a Pharmacovigilance Context ABSTRACT
at any dose is suspected to have resulted in adverse outcome in a
We propose and evaluate the use of a PSO/ACO methodology for
classification and rule discovery in the context of medication
Given the limitations of premarketing trials, e.g. highly selected
postmarketing surveillance or pharmacovigilance. Our study
patient populations and limited duration of studies, often times
considers a large data set of diabetic patients on two widely used
unanticipated rare adverse events go undetected, and they only
antidiabetic drugs (rosiglitazone and pioglitazone), and the risk of
become more apparent when they reach the general population.
myocardial infarction as an adverse effect. The goal is to
Widely prescribed medications pose a substantial risk of
determine the presence of previously undetected causal
previously undiscovered population-level effects during
relationships between therapeutics, patient characteristics, and
premarketing trials. Detection of adverse events relies mainly on
adverse medication outcomes. Since the proposed approach is
three sources of information, namely a) data gathered from
able to discover classification rules, the elicited knowledge may
premarketing clinical trials; b) voluntary reporting of adverse
suggest new hypotheses regarding associations between risk
events in postmarketing phase and; c) information gathered from
factors and an adverse event. Our classification results show high
postmarketing observational studies. For example, several
accuracy. Furthermore, several medication-related rules were
postmarketing research studies have indicated a strong correlation
discovered and analyzed. The elicited rules support previous
between Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) selective inhibitors, a class
studies from the medical literature. Moreover, one of the studied
of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), with an
antidiabetic drugs (rosiglitazone) was found to have a significant
increase in the risk of myocardial infarction (MI)
higher risk of an adverse event on diabetic, hypertensive patients,
[1][5][11][16][24][29]. This was particularly true for Rofecoxib
as compared to the other drug. This last finding suggests that
(Vioxx) which was withdrawn from the market in September,
pioglitazone may have a protective effect against myocardial
infarction on diabetic, hypertensive patients.
The work reported herein is part of an observational retrospective cohort study of patients on diabetic medications who may be at an
Categories and Subject Descriptors
increased risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) [3]. CHD is defined as acute myocardial infarction requiring hospitalization.
I.2.6 [Artificial Intelligence]: Learning – Knowledge acquisition.
We focus our analysis on two antidiabetic oral medications,
I.2.8 [Artificial Intelligence]: Problem Solving, Control
Methods, and Search – Heuristic methods
The purpose of the present study is two-fold: First, we seek to
General Terms
evaluate potential benefits of PSO/ACO methodology as an
Algorithms, Measurement, Experimentation.
adjunct to more traditional statistical methods for postmarketing surveillance or pharmacovigilance (hereafter we will use both
Keywords
terms indistinctively). The goal is to determine, using data from
electronic medical records, the presence of previously undetected
Swarm Intelligence, Ant Algorithms, PSO/ACO, Knowledge
causal relationships between therapeutics, baseline characteristics
Discovery, Genetic Based Machine Learning, Postmarketing
(e.g. gender, race, age), comorbidities and adverse events.
Surveillance, Pharmacovigilance, Healthcare.
Second, use the elicited knowledge to develop potentially new hypotheses as to suspected associations between all risk factors
1. INTRODUCTION
involved that may play a critical role in the adverse outcome.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defines an Adverse
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows: Section 2
Drug Event (ADE) as “any incident where the use of a medication
presents a brief overview of the rationale for a nation-wide and institution-wide pharmacovigilance efforts, in combination with
large electronic patient databases. Section 3 describes the patient
Age at time of enrollment within one of the following
data used for the current study, while section 4 briefly describes
10-year intervals starting at 20 years of age: {[20-30),
the PSO/ACO2 algorithm. In sections 5 and 6 we present our
[30-40), [40-50), [50-60), [60-70), [70-80), [80- )};
results and findings. Finally, in section 7 we draw some
conclusions and discuss possible future work.
iii) Race as one of {White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native
2. BACKGROUND
In 2006, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued a report, entitled
iv) Medication (Rosiglitazone / Pioglitazone);
The Future of Drug Safety—Promoting and Protecting the Health
v) History of cardiovascular disease (Y/N). Diagnoses
of the Public [20]. Among other suggestions, the IOM report
considered are coronary artery disease, angina,
recommended that the FDA identify ways to access other health-
congestive heart failure, cerebrovascular accident,
related databases and create a public-private partnership to
percutaneous coronary intervention, coronary artery
support safety and efficacy studies. As a result, the FDA has been
fostering public-private collaborations, leveraging increasingly available large electronic patient databases and exploring new,
emerging technologies to further advance the safety and quality of
vii) HBA1C as indicator for disease management (Y:
all realms of healthcare. Partners Healthcare System is one of
patient has been monitored/ N: patient has not been
five institutions which, in conjunction with the eHealth Initiative
(eHI) and the FDA, is collaborating in a nation-wide effort to
viii) HBA1C > 8 as indicator of poor glycemic control and
develop novel health information technology tools to create an
active drug safety surveillance system across the U.S.
ix) Creatinine as indicator of disease management (Y/N);
Independent from nation-wide efforts, Partners Healthcare System has been carrying out patient-population pharmacovigilance
x) Creatinine > 2 as indicator of chronic renal
research using patient data from the Research Patient Data
insufficiency and disease severity (Y/N);
Registry (RPDR). Partners Healthcare System is a non-profit,
xi) Hypertension (Y/N) indicated by use of any
integrated health system that includes Brigham and Women's
Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital. The RPDR is a
xii) Hyperlipidemia (Y/N) indicated by use of any anti-
centralized data warehouse containing clinical data such as patient
hyperlipidemic medications (See Table 1);
demographic information, dates, medication, diagnosis information, and discharge summaries.
xiii) Hospitalizations/ED visits as proxy for severity of
Table 1. Characteristics table for patients on rosiglitazone or
Institutional Review Board approval was obtained prior to
pioglitazone monotherapy. Values are number (%) unless
selecting a group of 2,185 diabetic patients on rosiglitazone or
otherwise indicated.
pioglitazone monotherapy from a cohort study of 34,252 patients
on diabetic medications. These two medications belong to the
thiazolidinediones (TZs) class of oral hypoglycemic medications.
Both rosiglitazone and pioglitazone were introduced to the market
in 1999. Both medications have shown to increase the risk of
congestive heart failure (CHF) [30], and rosiglitazone has been
associated with increased risk of myocardial infarction when
Only patients over 18 years of age with at least one record of
prescription as an outpatient, or dispensation as an inpatient, of
either rosiglitazone (n = 1594) or pioglitazone (n= 591) between
January 1st, 2000 and December 31st, 2006 were included in the study. Selected patients should be on monotherapy (single
antidiabetic medication) for the whole duration of the study. Our
definition of monotherapy was more stringent than the definition
used in the larger cohort study in order to limit confounding
factors between medication intake and a possible adverse event.
The outcome of the study was the incidence of acute MI
(identified by ICD9 code of 410.x) requiring hospitalization.
Characteristics of rosiglitazone and pioglitazone users were
similar in demographics and risk factors (Table 1).
Data for each patient consists of the following thirteen potential
risk factors. All data are nominal values:
attributes in the TS, then the created rule is not yet complete and
the algorithm performs a second step where it checks those
attributes with continuous values. It is worth remembering that for
nominal attributes the comparison operator used is ”=” whereas,
for continuous attributes both “<=” and “>” are used to define the
upper and lower bounds of the range of possible values for this
attribute. The best discovered rule (BestRule) is pruned and added to the rule set. An example that satisfies all the triplets <attribute 4. PSO/ACO2 operator value> in the antecedent of the rule and belongs to the
In this section we present a brief overview of the particle swarm
class assigned by the rule is considered correctly classified.
optimization/ant colony optimization (PSO/ACO2) algorithm
These correctly classified examples are removed from the TS.
proposed by Holden and Freitas [17]. Both PSO and ACO
The iteration process continues until the number of unclassified
algorithms mimic a population of decentralized, self-organized
examples for the current class C falls below a predefined
individuals that collectively work towards finding best solution(s)
threshold(MaxUncovExampPerClass). Once this threshold is
through an iterative searching process. Convergence to an
reached, all the removed training examples are returned to TS, and
optimal or near optimal solution is reached by social interaction
the algorithm continues execution for the next class Ci.
amongst individuals, either by exchanging information with local
This section presented a brief description of the PSO/ACO
neighbors –in the case of particles in PSO- or by updating a
algorithm. For a more comprehensive description, see [17][18].
pheromone trail –in the case of ants in ACO.
PSO/ACO2 has been mainly used to discover classification rules
5. RESULTS
in the context of data mining. This algorithm is capable of
For our experiments, we used a freely available Java
handling nominal attribute values without converting them into
implementation of the PSO/ACO2 v1.0 rule induction algorithm
numbers, as well as continuous data values.
[19] and the previously described data set of 2,185 diabetic
patients on rosiglitazone or pioglitazone monotherapy (section 3). We used the standard 10-fold cross validation, precision fitness
function, PSO continuous optimizer, and 200 iterations for all
four experiments. The only varying parameter between
add all training examples to TS
experiments was the number of particles, which was set to 102,
WHILE (number of uncovered examples belonging to
152, 202 and 252 for each experiment respectively.
Figure 1. Sequential algorithm used by the PSO/ACO2 for
It can be seen from Table 2 that the classification accuracy for the
knowledge discovery – in pseudocode (from [17][18]).
PSO/ACO2 algorithm is very similar for all four configurations, with 20^2 being slightly better than the rest in terms of avg.
class C > MaxUncovExampPerClass)
classification rate and standard deviation.
Discover best nominal rule Rule for the class C
When applicable, add continuous terms to RuleTable 2. Classification accuracy on diabetes dataset for the
Return best discovered rule BestRulePSO/ACO2 algorithm with varying number of particles. Particles 10^2 15^2 20^2 25^2 BestRule to rule set: RS = RS ⋃ BestRule
Update TS by removing correctly classified
Accuracy (Avg±SD) TS = TS – {correctly classified examples}
Given the context of our study, we focused our analysis of elicited
knowledge on medication-related rules, since one of our goals is
Order rules in RS by descending quality
to elucidate whether a) there are causal relationships between
Discovered knowledge is represented in the form of rules, where
therapeutics (medications), comorbidities, and baseline
each rule consists of a set of one or more <attribute operator
characteristics, and adverse events and b) we can detect such
value> triplets (antecedent) and a consequent indicating the class
signals with the PSO/ACO2 algorithm. The next section presents
to which the classified object belongs. For nominal values, the
operator used is “=”, whereas for continuous attribute values “<=”, “>” are used:
6. KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY
IF <attrib op value> AND…AND <attrib op value> THEN <class>
In this section we present our analysis of discovered rules using the results produced by PSO/ACO2 with 202 particles. We
PSO/ACO2 algorithm depicted in Figure 1 (based on [17][18])
analyzed all medication-related rules found. These rules are listed
carries out the knowledge discovery process starting with an
empty rule set (RS), sequentially searching the space of possible solutions to discover one classification rule at a time as follows:
We validated the discovered rules by a) providing references to
For each class C, the algorithm iterates through a set of training
literature supporting similar findings and/or b) performing a crude
examples (TS) from which rules will be created. In a first step,
relative risk analysis of variables in each rule.
only rules with nominal attributes are evaluated and the
The relative risk (RR) estimates the magnitude of an association
discovered rule (Rule) is returned. If there are continuous
between potential factors and an adverse event. It measures the
incidence of the event in the exposed group compared with the
proxy for severity of disease, so having no visits indicates that the
non-exposed group. A relative risk of 1.0 indicates that the
patient is relatively healthy for his/her condition and there are no
incidence rates in both groups are identical and there is no
contributing factors that may increase the risk of an adverse event.
association between the potential factors and the outcome. A
The fourth rule Table 3: “If Medication = P and PriorMI = N
relative risk of less than 1.0 indicates a negative association, or
then no_event” indicates that a patient on pioglitazone is at lesser
protective effect between potential factors and the outcome under
risk of having and adverse event if there is no prior myocardial
study, while a relative risk greater than 1.0 indicates a positive
infarction (MI). A myocardial infarction may compromise the
association or an increased risk of an adverse event [15].
function of the heart and may increase the risk of subsequent
In the following section we will see that some of the causal
events. This is particularly true in patients with diabetes [6] [13].
relationships have a truly protective effect, that is, a relative risk
Patients on pioglitazone with evidence of having an MI prior to
of less than 1.0 (rules 1-3 in Table 3, analyzed in section 6.1.1),
the study had a 2.68 (CI 1.61 – 4.46) risk of having an event when
while others, may show a protective effect in comparison – as in
compared to patients on pioglitazone who did not have an MI
the case of rule 5 in Table 3, analyzed in section 6.1.2.
prior to Jan 1st, 2000. For patients on rosiglitazone there is a slightly higher risk of having an MI if the patient has had a prior
Table 3. List of discovered medication-related rules. Medication = R indicates Rosiglitazone, and Medication = P indicates Pioglitazone 6.1.2 Rosiglitazone-Related Rules
Rules five to eight in Table 3 depict causal relationships between
If Medication = P and hasHBA1C = Y then no_event
rosiglitazone and an adverse event. Rule five “If Medication = R
If Medication = P and Hospitalizations/ED = N then no_event
and Hypertension = N then no_event” indicates that a patient on Rosiglitazone with no hypertension may have a lesser risk of
If Medication = P and PriorMI = N then no_event
having an adverse event. Our calculations indicate that
If Medication = R and Hypertension = N then no_event
hypertensive patients on rosiglitazone have a relative risk of 9.90
If Medication = R and PriorMI = N and hasCreatGt2 = N
(CI 8.46 – 11.60) of having an adverse event, compared to
hypertensive patients on Pioglitazone (RR 2.87; CI 2.02 – 4.07).
If Medication = R and Gender = M and Age_Range = 50-60
Given the fact that coronary artery disease and hypertension are
common risk factors in patients with diabetes [14][22], patients
If Medication = R and Age_Range = 60-70 and
presenting these conditions may be more susceptible of having an
6.1 Analysis of Discovered Rules
Rule six “If Medication = R and PriorMI = N and hasCreatGt2 = N then no_event” indicates that patients on rosiglitazone with no
prior MI and creatinine levels within normal values are at
There are four pioglitazone-related rules (Table 3). The first rule
considerably lower risk of having an event (RR = 0.44; CI 0.37 –
refers to the administration of pioglitazone with attributes taken
0.53) when compared to patients on rosiglitazone with abnormal
into consideration. The rule suggests no association between
creatinine levels (RR 2.253; CI 1.828 – 2.777)). [1][23] indicate
pioglitazone and the possibility of an adverse event (MI). Our
that abnormal kidney function increases the risk of myocardial
calculations indicate that the relative risk (RR) of having an
adverse event if a patient is on pioglitazone compared to a patient
Rule seven “If Medication = R and Gender = M and Age_Range
on rosiglitazone is 0.6086 (Confidence Interval (CI) 0.467 –
= 50-60 then has_event” indicates that a 50-60 y/o male patient
0.7933). This is consistent with reports from [8] indicating that
on rosiglitazone is slightly more likely to have an adverse event
pioglitazone may have a neutral to favorable effect towards
(RR = 1.735; CI 1.155 – 2.606) than a female patient in the same
cardiovascular adverse events. Similarly, [10] and [31] have
age group. This is consistent with reports from [2] indicating that
reported that rosiglitazone may have a higher risk of
although both diabetic men and women are at higher risk of an
cardiovascular events compared to pioglitazone.
adverse cardiovascular event than non-diabetic patients, diabetic
The second rule in Table 3: “If Medication = P and hasHBA1C =
men in this age range are at a higher risk than diabetic women.
Y then no_event” indicates that if a patient is taking pioglitazone
The last rule in Table 3 “If Medication = R and Age_Range =
(Medication = P) and patient’s HBA1C has been monitored
60-70 and hasHBA1C = Y then has_event”. The rule itself
(hasHBA1C = Y) then there is no event. It is worth remembering
indicates that patients within this age range and with HBA1C
that HBA1C is used as a proxy for glycemic control and disease
monitored may have an event. Our calculations indicate that
management. hasHBA1C = Y indicates that the patient’s blood
patients on rosiglitazone within this age range and with monitored
sugar has been monitored. A relative risk of 0.65 (CI 0.42 – 0.99)
HBA1C do not seem to be particularly at risk of having an event
indicates that a patient on pioglitazone with monitoring of
(RR= 0.70; CI 0.517 – 0.948) when compared to all patients on
HBA1C is less likely to have an adverse event than patients on
rosiglitazone and HBA1C = Y (RR= 0.769; CI 0.639 – 0.925).
pioglitazone with no monitoring of HBA1C [21] [26].
This suggests that: a) patients in this particular age range may not
The third rule in Table 3: “If Medication = P and
be at a higher risk of an adverse event and; b) appropriate
Hospitalizations/ED visits = N then no_event” indicates that a
glycemic monitoring may reduce the overall risk of an adverse
patient on pioglitazone with no hospitalizations or emergency
event and improve disease management [25].
department (ED) visits is less likely to have an event with a RR = 0.423; CI 0.269 – 0.665). Hospitalizations/ED visits is used as a
6.2 Visualizing Causal Relationships 7. DISCUSSION AND FUTURE WORK
We explored the applicability of a heatmap to visualize causal
Overall, elicited causal relationships between therapeutics, patient
relationships in an easy-to-interpret manner. Similar to a weather
characteristics and an adverse event were consistent with findings
map, where temperature is encoded by color, in a heatmap we
in medical literature. These findings support our initial
depict the potential risk of an adverse event given specific
assumptions as to the suitability of PSO/ACO as an alternative to
combination of factors (e.g. medication, comorbidities, baseline
more traditional methods for knowledge discovery in a
characteristics) in terms of ‘temperature’, where ‘cold
pharmacovigilance context. Furthermore, due to the inherent
temperatures’ represent a low relative risk, and ‘hot temperatures’
nature of the applied algorithm, elicited rules were seamlessly
represent a high relative risk of an adverse event.
coupled into a visual display easy to understand, thereby
We display potential causal relationships in a two-dimensional
increasing the applicability and understandability of these
heatmap where the color of a cell in the x,y position depicts the
relative risk for patients on medication x who had a comorbidty y
We expect that the elicited knowledge may provide critical
of having an adverse event. The first two rows in Figure 2 depict
insight into potentially worrisome combination of factors that
the relative risk of having an adverse event for patients on
may increase the risk of an adverse event. For example, depicted
rosiglitazone (R) and pioglitazone (P). The third row depicts the
in Figure 2, column five, we see that diabetic hypertensive
risk of having an event regardless of the medication (overall). For
patients on rosiglitazone are at higher risk for an adverse event
example, the cell in position row 2, column 3 in Figure 2 is a
while pioglitazone seems to have a protective effect on diabetic
color-coded representation of the (low) relative risk of having an
hypertensive patients. This observation prompts two hypotheses
adverse event for patients on pioglitazone who had HBA1C levels
worthy of further investigation: a) is this increased risk due to the
monitored, as detected by rule 2 in Table 3.
fact that thiazolidinediones in general can among other things, increase fluid retention, and hence increase blood pressure [22]? Is this particularly true for rosiglitazone but not for pioglitazone? Or b) could this be due to a possible drug-drug interaction between rosiglitazone and antihypertensive drugs?
In Summary, our findings are by no means exhaustive, but demonstrate that the potential benefits of PSO/ACO for knowledge elicitation are many-fold: The approach itself is
capable of discovering causal relationships in the form of rules
from patient data extracted from electronic medical records; discovered rules can be easily mapped into heatmaps – or any
other visual aid - to provide users with ‘at-a-glance’ immediate interpretation of findings; rules could be seamlessly incorporated
into monitoring systems [12]; elicited knowledge may serve to develop new hypotheses as to suspected associations between all
risk factors involved that may play a critical role in the adverse
Figure 2. Heatmap depicting relative risk of an adverse event
Important directions for future work include: a) extending our
given a risk factor for patients on rosiglitazone (R),
analysis of discovered rules; b) further investigate findings of
pioglitazone (P) and regardless of medication (overall).
diabetic hypertensive patients and their use of antihypertensive medications; c) improve visual display of results; d) explore other
Although exploratory, we have found this strategy of representing
knowledge discovery methods and compare results and; e) extend
the strength of causal relationships by colors extremely powerful.
our model to include other possible adverse events.
Since the color of a cell depicts a quantitative risk relative to other cells in the same column, it is possible for users to identify
8. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
potential trends and outliers in data. For example, column 5 in
We would like to thank Drs. Mena Macedo and Margarita
Figure 2 depicts the risk of an adverse event in hypertensive
Sanchez for their advice in writing this manuscript.
patients on rosiglitazone (row 1), pioglitazone (row 2) and overall (row 3). It shows that hypertensive patients on rosiglitazone may have a potentially higher risk of having an adverse events
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Comparison of Cardiovascular Outcomes in Elderly Patients
REVIEW ARTICLE Swertia chirayita – an overview P. Joshi1,* and V. Dhawan2 1TERI School of Advanced Studies and 2The Energy and Resources Institute, Darbari Seth Block, Habitat Place, Lodhi Road, New Delhi 110 003, India widespread use. Chirata is called Anaryatikta, Ardhatikta, Swertia chirayita is a medicinal plant indigenous to Bhunimba, Chiratika, Chiratitka, Haima, Jva
Like Drugs, Talk Therapy Can Change Brain Chemistry By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D. After six years of twice-weekly psychotherapy sessions, Eric had plenty of insight. But his anxiety level had barely changed. He was still bedeviled by a ceaseless urge to wash his hands and shameful and repetitive violent thoughts. Out of desperation and against the wishes of his therapist, he visited my offic