What Is This Site?
Drug Fact Check makes FDA adverse event reporting data searchable and accessible. We pull data from the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) via the openFDA API and present it in an easy-to-understand format.
Our goal is to help patients, caregivers, and researchers quickly find information about reported side effects for prescription and over-the-counter medications.
What Is FAERS?
The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) is a database of adverse event reports, medication error reports, and product quality complaints submitted to the FDA. These reports come from healthcare professionals, consumers, and drug manufacturers.
Key things to understand about FAERS data:
- Voluntary reporting: Most reports are submitted voluntarily, which means not all adverse events are captured.
- No proven causation: A report does not mean the drug caused the adverse event. The event may have been caused by the underlying disease, another medication, or other factors.
- Reporting bias: Drugs with more users, more media attention, or that treat serious conditions tend to have more reports.
- Duplicate reports: The same event may be reported multiple times by different parties.
How to Use This Data
This site is useful for:
- Getting a general sense of what side effects have been reported for a drug
- Comparing the types of reactions reported across different medications
- Understanding which drugs are most commonly associated with a particular side effect
- Research and educational purposes
What This Site Is NOT
This is not medical advice. Do not use this site to make decisions about starting, stopping, or changing any medication. Always consult your doctor, pharmacist, or other qualified healthcare provider.
The number of reports for a drug does not indicate how dangerous it is. Widely-used drugs naturally accumulate more reports. A drug with 10,000 reports used by 10 million people may actually have a lower adverse event rate than a drug with 100 reports used by 1,000 people.
Data Source
All data comes from the openFDA Drug Adverse Events API. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by the FDA, openFDA, or any government agency.