According to the pharmaceutical legislation, all new medicinal products must meet all quality, efficacy, and safety requirements before they can be approved by the regulatory authorities. However, in certain cases, it becomes apparent only after a medicine has been used in clinical practice, that it is necessary to withdraw a medicine from the market, also from a safety perspective.
This study aims to provide an overview of the withdrawn medicinal products from the market between 1960 and 2018 for safety reasons and to describe the different types of toxicity due to which the drugs were withdrawn.
We used several databases to review the withdrawn drugs. The primary one was the »Withdrawn« database. We also used scientific articles in PubMed and Google Scholar to search for withdrawn drugs. Our focus was on low molecular weight drugs ("classical drugs" with a molecular weight of up to 1 kDa) which were withdrawn due to safety reasons. For all collected drugs, we searched for the year of withdrawal, the ATC group, the therapeutic group, the adverse effects that led to the withdrawal, and the countries in which the drug was withdrawn.
Based on all established criteria, we found 172 withdrawn drugs from the market for safety reasons between 1960 and 2018. Most of the drugs, 30.8 % (53/172) were withdrawn from the market between 1980 and 1989. In terms of countries, 13.4 % (23/172) of medicines were withdrawn globally and 12.2 % (21/172) were withdrawn across the European Union. Within the EU, France had the highest number of withdrawals (41). The most common cause of withdrawals for safety reasons was the occurrence of hepatotoxicity. It was responsible for 22.7 % (39/172) of the withdrawals, followed by multiple toxicity which caused the withdrawal of 19.2 % (33/172) of the drugs, and cardiovascular toxicity which caused the withdrawal of 11,3 % (20/172) of the drugs.
The withdrawal of medicinal products is a complex procedure and means not only a significant financial loss for the marketing authorization holder but also problems for all those patients who have used the medicinal product. Therefore, it is important that the monitoring of medicines on the market is updated and improved to stay up to date.
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