Detection of emerging diseases in occupational health: usefulness and limitations of the application of pharmacosurveillance methods to the database of the French National Occupational Disease Surveillance and Prevention network (RNV3P).

Abstract

To test data mining methods used in pharmacosurveillance in order to identify potential emerging disease-nuisance associations in the national occupational disease surveillance and prevention network (RNV3P) database. Proportional reporting ratios (PRR) used in pharmacosurveillance were applied to detect disproportional reporting of disease-nuisance associations which are not compensated by the national social security system. The 24 785 reports of the RNV3P were grouped into 1344 different disease-nuisance associations reported more than twice, of which 422 did not give entitlement to compensation by the social security system. Among these associations, 162 were potentially emergent and generated a signal, of which eight associations involve cancer. This work is the first stage of an exploratory investigation submitting the questions raised to experts and involving participants in the network in reflection on the hypotheses generated.