Use of a Healthcare Claims Database for Post-Marketing Safety Assessments of Eribulin in Japan: A Comparative Assessment with a Prospective Post-Marketing Surveillance Study

Background To understand the extent to which a large-scale healthcare claims database (DB) captures the safety profile of eribulin mesylate (Halaven ® , Eisai Co., Ltd., Japan), we compared patient characteristics, drug use, and adverse events (AEs) between data for patients treated with eribulin retrieved from a DB and data for metastatic breast cancer patients from a conventional prospective post-marketing surveillance (PMS). Methods We descriptively summarized patient characteristics and AEs of 551 and 951 patients retrieved from DB and PMS, respectively, during 2011‒2013. Using 2814 patient data from the DB during 2011‒2016, the drug use and AE incidence over time were assessed. Results In both datasets, 99.8% were females, and the mean age was 57.8 ± 10.7 years. The mean number of eribulin administration was 11.1 ± 10.9 and 10.1 ± 7.8 in DB and PMS, respectively. Although, overall, the difference in AE incidence between the two datasets was moderate, gaps were larger for nausea (DB: 73.32% vs. PMS: 15.77%), neutropenia (20.87% vs. 66.67%), stomatitis (37.39% vs. 10.94%), and alopecia (0.36% vs. 12.09%). During 2011‒2016, the observed incidence of anemia or pyrexia significantly decreased (trend test, p = 0.0009 for both). Conclusion Generally, patient characteristics, drug use, and AE incidence between the DB and PMS were comparable; however, AEs such as neutropenia may require defining based on the laboratory data to achieve more comparable results in DBs. Besides the usefulness of healthcare claims DBs for long-term assessments, they may also serve as a good complementary to PMS in the pharmacovigilance of eribulin.