Abstract

Objective: To identify the trends in tolvaptan prescription and the association between aging and tolvaptan-induced hypernatremia.

Materials and methods: A health insurance claims database and a spontaneous adverse drug reaction database were used.

Results: Of all patients who had been prescribed tolvaptan, the proportion of patients aged 60 – 79 years and ≥ 80 years was consistent at ~ 40%. Moreover, the prescription frequency of tolvaptan increased over time for patients in the same age groups. The adjusted reporting odds ratio of tolvaptan-induced hypernatremia was 5.54 (95% confidence interval, 3.31 – 9.25) in patients aged ≥ 60 years from among all patients and 2.09 (95% confidence interval, 1.59 – 2.75) in those aged ≥ 80 years from among those aged ≥ 60 years.

Conclusion: It may be necessary to be aware of hypernatremia in elderly patients who are expected to have increased prescriptions of tolvaptan.

Author Details

Authors

• Takaya Uno^{1, 2}
• Kouichi Hosomi²
• Satoshi Yokoyama²
• Kazuyoshi Kawabata¹

Departments

• ¹ Department of Pharmacy, National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center, Suita, and
• ² Division of Clinical Drug Informatics, Faculty of Pharmacy, Kindai University, Higashi-Osaka, Japan

Address

Takaya Uno, PhD

Department of Pharmacy

National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center

564-8565, Suita, Osaka, Japan
Email: [email protected]

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