Pharmacovigilance and Clinical Trials

Pharmacovigilance and Cosmetovigilance

Tracks 18:Pharmacovigilance and Cosmetovigilance

Pharmacovigilance (PV or PhV), also known as drug safety, is the pharmacological science relating to the collection, detection, assessment, monitoring, and prevention of adverse effects with pharmaceutical product. The etymological roots for the word "pharmacovigilance" are: pharmakon (Greek for drug) and vigilare (Latin for to keep watch). As such, pharmacovigilance heavily focuses on adverse drug reactions, or ADRs, which are defined as any response to a drug which is noxious and unintended, including lack of efficacy (the condition that this definition only applies with the doses normally used for the prophylaxis, diagnosis or therapy of disease, or for the modification of physiological disorder function was excluded with the latest amendment of the applicable legislation). Medication errors such as overdose, and misuse and abuse of a drug as well as drug exposure during pregnancy and breastfeeding, are also of interest, even without an adverse event, because they may result in an adverse drug reaction.

Cosmetovigilance is the ongoing and systematic monitoring of the safety of cosmetics in terms of human health. The aim is to detect adverse effects of cosmetic products, and to prevent adverse effects by taking appropriate measures. Regulations for cosmetic products primarily address the safety of products that may be used by large populations of healthy consumers. The identification and analysis of adverse effects related to cosmetic products is a process that is currently still, to a large extent, industry driven. It is the responsibility of manufacturers to determine that products and ingredients are safe before they are marketed, and then to collect reports of adverse reactions.