Reeha Sharon

Primary fields of research

Investigation of long-term adverse effects of antipsychotic drugs using Danish healthcare register data.

Current research

It is known that long-term or cumulative effects of antipsychotic drugs are very difficult to predict in the clinical trial phases due to the short duration of the trials, controlled environment and limited number of patients; hence, studies which help in understanding the various etiologies and experiences in different population groups are required. In this study, the overall objective is to develop an understanding of the antipsychotics´ adverse events from registries, data mining these sources and validating the results using statistical methods to get a good understanding on rare exposures and rare outcomes by using healthcare registries. The study will characterize patterns of antipsychotics long-term therapy and schizophrenia and schizoaffective disease course. The study involves mapping of treatment episodes over time, treatment intensity, as well as investigating the relation between treatment patterns and relapse. The study will address successful antipsychotic treatment discontinuation and prediction of treatment response. Through the investigation of the risk of long-term effects of antipsychotics, relevant exposure and comparison groups will be selected. Different exposure models, involving time-dependent exposure, dose effects and cumulative effects will be used.