TGA Medicines Safety Update and Australian Prescriber—back to the future (take 2)

Australian Prescriber has a history of promoting medicines safety. This has included sharing the Medicines Safety Update publication from 2010 to 2014 and before then its predecessor, the Australian Adverse Drug Reactions Bulletin.¹

We are pleased to resume our collaboration with the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and raise awareness of these updates by publishing summaries of Medicines Safety Update articles on the Australian Prescriber website. Each summary will include a link to the full TGA article.

Medicines Safety Update articles provide health professionals with practical advice on contemporary and emerging drug safety issues.² By sharing the summaries, we hope these safety messages reach a wider audience of health professionals. We also hope this will encourage reporting of suspected adverse drug reactions to the TGA, which is critical to increasing our knowledge of drug safety and improving patient outcomes.^3,4

Medicines Safety Update articles are published on the TGA website as relevant topics arise. We will publish summaries of the articles in the subsequent issue of Australian Prescriber.

In this issue, we include summaries of the most recent Medicines Safety Update articles, urging caution when prescribing baclofen off label and warning of romosozumab cardiovascular risks. We encourage you to click through to read the full TGA articles.

 

References

1. Dowden JS. Adverse reactions and Australian Prescriber: back to the future. Aust Prescr 2010;33:9.
2. Therapeutic Goods Administration. Safety updates. Canberra: Department of Health and Aged Care; 2023. [cited 2023 Dec 18]
3. Martin JH, Lucas C. Reporting adverse drug events to the Therapeutic Goods Administration. Aust Prescr 2021;44:2-3.
4. Thynne TRJ, Gabb GM. Limitations of randomised controlled trials as evidence of drug safety. Aust Prescr 2023;46:22-3.