Primary Drug Information Resources

Clinically Oriented Journals

• New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)
• Journal of the American Medical Association
• The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
• Archives of Internal Medicine
• Lancet
• British Medical Journal (BMJ)

Pharmacy practice Journals

• Annals of Pharmacotherapy
• Pharmacotherapy
• British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology (BJCP)
• American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy (AJHP)

Primary Drug Information Resources

Eman AlMutairi

Objectives

Thank You

Instructions when using primary literature

any questions

• To know the types of Drug information resources
• To review primary resources and learn how to use them
• To know the advantages and disadvantages of primary resources

Be careful when you use new information from primary resource

Peer-reviewed journals are better in quality and objectivity than non-peer reviewed journals

Be sure that you understand the data (i.e. inclusion or exclusion criteria, study methods and interventions, primary outcome, statistical and clinical relevance of the reported findings), before you apply that information to the patient).

Remember that case reports relate only to one patient not a whole patient population.

Types of Drug Information resources

Advantages and Disadvantages of Primary Literature

Advantages of primary literature:

Access to detailed information regarding a particular issue

Example of primary literature resources (Peer-reviewed Journals)

What are the types of primary literature?

Secondary

Resources

Primary

Resources

Tertiary

Resources

Advantages of primary literature:

The information generally can considered to be current

• it tends to be more recent than secondary and tertiary literature

Advantages of primary literature:

The ability to personally assess the validity for the study method and results

Primary Literature

• Consists of clinical research studies and reports, both published and unpublished.
• It is the source of information for the development of secondary and tertiary literature resources.

Disadvantages of primary literature:

misleading to an incorrect conclusion by missing conflicting evidence available in the literature.

• Controlled trials
• Cohort studies
• Case series
• Case report

Disadvantages of primary literature:

You need good skills to evaluate clinical trials and study methodology to accurately assess the primary literature

Disadvantages of primary literature:

Time consuming to read and analyze all the details often found in the original studies

Case report

• Detailed presentation of a single case or handful of cases
• Generally report a new or unique finding

e.g. previous undescribed disease

e.g. unexpected link between diseases

e.g. unexpected new therapeutic effect

e.g. New adverse events

Example of case report study:

“Normal plasma cholesterol in an 88-year-old man who eats 25 eggs a day” [Kern J, NEJM 1991; 324:896–899]

Case series

Cohort studies

• Descriptive study of a samll group of patients with a similar diagnosis
• Generally report on new/unique condition

Primary?

An “observational” design comparing individuals with a known risk factor or exposure with others without the risk factor or exposure

Example of case series study:

Stein IF, Leventhal ML. Amenorrhea associated with bilateralpolycystic ovaries. Am J Obstet Gynecol 1935;29:181-91

They described polycystic ovarian syndrome in 1935 based on the data of seven patients

Randomized Controlled Trials

• The “gold standard” of research designs
• Provides most convincing evidence of relationship between exposure and effect

Not all literature published in journals is classified as primary literature.

• Review articles (Syetematic review, meta-analysis)
• Editorials.

Give an example of published articles that is not considered as a primary literature?