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DailyMed: Know the potential harms of your prescriptions

Written by

Dr. Susan Molchan

in

,

Most of us take the prescription drugs our doctors prescribe without giving them a second thought. But, many, if not most of brand-name drugs we take, may have harmful side effects in addition to potential benefits. Might a website called DailyMed help you understand the potential harms of your prescriptions?

DailyMed is an FDA web site, overseen by the National Library of Medicine,  which provides a wide range of information about virtually all prescription drugs, including their possible harmful side effects. You can also learn about any possible dangers from drug interactions.

The information on DailyMed is essentially what’s written on the official FDA-approved labels for the drugs, although kept in one place and continually updated. You can check the warnings for the generic and brand-name drugs you’re taking and the risks of harmful drug interactions. But, what you’ll find is a laundry list of information.

Unless you have medical training to weigh what is important and what is not, as literally everything associated with a drug is contained in the label, it will be hard to understand potential harms of a drug. Just because something is “associated” with a drug being taken by a sick person does not mean that drug “caused” the problem. This information is included for many reasons, including legal coverage for the drug’s manufacturer.

There is a huge amount of information on the site, which you may want to discuss with your doctor. The site does not appear to have any consumer-friendly parts to it. Even if you were told about a drug’s risks at one time, if the drug has only been on the market 10 or 15 years, new information is always emerging. It is fairly common for the FDA to put out stronger warnings about a drug once it has been on the market for a while or to withdraw it from the market because it has been found to be dangerous. And, your doctor may not be aware.

The DailyMed site contains 95,791 drug listings. You can search by drug name, manufacturer name, or drug class, as well as National Drug Code (NDC ) code, something you can find on a drug’s packaging from each manufacturer.

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Comments

3 responses to “DailyMed: Know the potential harms of your prescriptions”

  1. Penny Hammack Avatar
    Penny Hammack

    Once a year is not nearly often enough. I have a variety of doctors giving me new prescriptions and, since I’m prone to negative reactions, I check for side effects every time I get a new med. I do try to keep my various doctors updated on what I’m taking but have found that some doctors really don’t care, probably because they are focused on their own specialty and assume that “they know best”. I’ll be checking out DailyMed but really need a comprehensive way to cross check all my meds and possible interactions as well as side effects.

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  2. Penny Hammack Avatar
    Penny Hammack

    OK I decided to check out DailyMed. I take a number of prescriptions plus OTC meds suggested by my physician. I recently discovered, by accident, that diclofenac potassium 50mg worked better than the hydrocodone that I was taking for chronic pain. But…diclofenac is an nsaid and since I’m old and know that nsaids aren’t recommended for seniors I am concerned about taking too much. I hoped that DailyMed would help me decide. I looked at both the patient and the health care provider versions, got a lot of warnings, but it never addressed an upper limit for seniors or anybody else, nor did it mention a companion med (misoprostol) that helps mitigate some of the gastrointestinal problems from diclofenac. Nor did it make any mention of adverse reactions when mixed with other prescriptions. So, DailyMed isn’t what I’m looking for. I’ll keep looking.

    Reply
  3. Lori R Avatar
    Lori R

    I have just found DailyMed and am going to take a look. I was put on Humira a few months ago, and lo and behold I just kept feeling worse and worse. Fortunately, my rheumatologist did blood tests and we identified that I have drug induced Lupus – and Humira is the only thing I’m on that can cause it. When I was first out on this drug, I looked everywhere for what the side effects of this drug are. Wasn’t happy at the thought of cancer as a side effect, but no where did I find that Lupus could be an issue. Since I did all that research, NOW I find that it “may cause” drug induced Lupus. Well, right now I feel like I have drug induced death happening! My primary care doctor placed me on Humira, which was a little odd for me too. But I thought she was acting in my best interests, but I found records where doctors report what money they receive from pharmaceutical companies and my primary care doctor appears to be on Humira’s payroll, with as much as they pay her! She didn’t tell me that this could be a side effect and we went over all of them (but one, obviously). I was not tested for TB prior to starting Humira either, so I am going to get tested now since I have issues breathing now. I am very careful not to get involved with doctors who take money from pharmaceuticals. My pain management doctor gave me a kidney infection and flare ups after he put me on Belbuca and did not let me change off of it, even though it made me sick. After ending up in the hospital, he still wouldn’t pull me off of it. I left his care and found a pain doctor who listened. He put me on a different form of Buprenorphine which caused my kidneys to flare and oral ulcers to proliferate. Made me sick again! At least he worked with me on finding the right drug to treat my chronic pain which doesn’t make me utterly ill. I’ll have fun proving this to doctors without a signed and notarized affidavit from my pain doc saying it causes me Heath issues! In today’s anti-opioid environment, people who have issues with these alternatives to opioids are in trouble. Also, I have been on other drugs that caused issues which, before the internet was out, were hard to know about. There was a wonderful antihistamine and decongestant, Seldane and Seldane-D, which eas pulled from being able to prescribe because it caused heart issues. No one checked me for heart issues, but they pulled me off the meds. Then there is fen-phen and Pondimin. Maybe I’ll get a cardio test one day. God knows I can’t walk up a flight of stairs without getting out of breath and I wonder how many drugs contribute to the issues I have now. I took Vioxx and it killed my sister.

    We need an overhaul of this entire system. When a large drug company can come out with a new antibiotic that they learn causes kidney failure, but they wait a week to report it to the FDA so all of their stockholders can bail on it first (true story) – they don’t think about the people they killed who took the med during the time stockholders were jumping. Not forgivable. Got a good award on that one against the drug manufacturer. So – how many more times are doctors not going care about the trash they are giving me to take? The FDA has filled its ranks with ex-CEO’s, managers, etc., from pharmaceutical companies so they can control the narratives, I would assume.

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