Introduction: Patients often take several different medications for multiple conditions concurrently. Therefore, when adverse drug events (ADEs) occur, it is necessary to consider the mechanisms responsible. Few approaches consider the mechanisms of ADEs, such as changes in physiological states. We proposed that the ontological framework for pharmacology and mechanism of action (pharmacodynamics) we developed could be used for this approach. However, the existing knowledge base contains little data on physiological chains (PCs).
Objective: We aimed to investigate a method for automatically generating missing PC from the viewpoint of anatomical structures. This study was conducted to determine dysuria-related adverse events more likely to occur during multidrug administration.
Methods: We adopted a systematic approach to determine drugs suspected to cause adverse events and incorporated existing data and data generated in our newly developed method into our ontological framework. The performance of automated data generation was evaluated using this newly developed system. Suspected drugs determined by the system were compared with those derived from adverse events databases.
Results: Of the 242 drugs involving suspected drug-induced urinary retention or dysuria, 26 suspected drugs were determined. Of these, five were drugs with side effects not listed in drug package inserts. The system derived potential mechanisms of action, PCs, and suspected drugs.
Conclusion: Our method is novel in that it generates PC data from anatomical structural properties and could serve as a knowledge base for determining suspected drugs by potential mechanisms of action.