Drugs and patient's dissatisfaction reporting: From a disproportionality pharmacovigilance analysis to social pharmacology.

Introduction: Patient satisfaction is a key element in medical practice. Few studies have investigated patient satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their drug treatment.

Method: Using the World Health Organization (WHO) global pharmacovigilance database, we investigated, through disproportionality analyses, potential associations between exposure to drugs and "patient dissatisfaction with treatment" reports. All reports of "patient dissatisfaction with treatment" in adults until 31/12/2024 were included.

Results/discussion: Results are expressed as reporting odds ratio (ROR). Among 506 reports, three quarters came from consumers, involving mainly women aged between 45 and 64. The main coreported term was drug inefficacy (before adverse drug reactions). The first anatomical therapeutic chemical (ATC) group was dermatological drugs (25.5%) followed by alimentary tract and metabolism (24.3%), nervous system (22.5%) drugs. A significant association was found with 22 drugs with the highest ROR values for plecanatide, efinaconazole and avatrombopag.

Conclusion: Despite its mandatory limitations (underreporting, selective reporting…), this study shows that pharmacovigilance data could help to understand some aspects of social pharmacology, here, patient dissatisfaction with their drug treatment.