Posted by SLS on June 13, 2013, at 5:28:06
In reply to Correlation does not equal causation (nm), posted by gardenergirl on June 12, 2013, at 23:52:21
You are right, of course.
Just because two things happen at the same time does not mean that they are related or occur as cause and effect. This is why any and all treatment-emergents adverse events that are seen during clinical trials of a medication must be reported, even if they are not at all related to the medication being studied. The resulting list of adverse events can be quite long and scary to read unless one understands the basis for the enumeration of these events. For instance, heart attack might be listed as a treatment-emergent event, even though it might not occur at a rate that is any higher than that seen in the general population. People have heart attacks. People who take Effexor have heart attacks.
- Scott
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From the package insert as reproduced by RxList:http://www.rxlist.com/effexor-drug/side-effects-interactions.htm
"In the tabulations that follow, reported adverse events were classified using a standard COSTART-based Dictionary terminology. The frequencies presented, therefore, represent the proportion of the 5356 patients exposed to multiple doses of either formulation of venlafaxine who experienced an event of the type cited on at least one occasion while receiving venlafaxine. All reported events are included except those already listed in Table 2 and those events for which a drug cause was remote. If the COSTART term for an event was so general as to be uninformative, it was replaced with a more informative term. It is important to emphasize that, although the events reported occurred during treatment with venlafaxine, they were not necessarily caused by it.
Events are further categorized by body system and listed in order of decreasing frequency using the following definitions: frequent adverse events are defined as those occurring on one or more occasions in at least 1/100 patients; infrequent adverse events are those occurring in 1/100 to 1/1000 patients; rare events are those occurring in fewer than 1/1000 patients."
"Cardiovascular systemFrequent: migraine; Infrequent: angina pectoris, arrhythmia, extrasystoles, hypotension, peripheral vascular disorder (mainly cold feet and/or cold hands), syncope, thrombophlebitis; Rare: aortic aneurysm, arteritis, first-degree atrioventricular block, bigeminy, bradycardia, bundle branch block, capillary fragility, cardiovascular disorder (mitral valve and circulatory disturbance), cerebral ischemia, coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, heart arrest, mucocutaneous hemorrhage, myocardial infarct, pallor."
Some see things as they are and ask why.
I dream of things that never were and ask why not.- George Bernard Shaw
poster:SLS
thread:1044818
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20130527/msgs/1045188.html