Google Helps Predict Side Effects of Mixing Drugs

+ - Google Helps Predict Side Effects of Mixing Drugs-> 0

Submitted by sciencehabit on Wednesday March 06, 2013 @11:30PM

sciencehabit writes "Pharmaceuticals often have side effects that go unnoticed until they're already available to the public. Doctors and even the FDA have a hard time predicting what drug combinations will lead to serious problems. But thanks to people scouring the web for the side effects of the drugs they're taking, researchers have now shown that Google and other search engines can be mined for dangerous drug combinations. In a new study, scientists tried the approach out on predicting hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar. They found that the data-mining procedure correctly predicted whether a drug combo did or did not cause hyperglycemia about 81% of the time."
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