News Feature | December 1, 2014

EHR Uncovers Drug Benefits

Katie Wike

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

12_HTO_Roundtable_EHR

At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, researchers have discovered certain drugs may be repurposed to treat cancer patients - and their EHR told them how

Diabetes drugs to treat cancer patients? Through EHR analysis, experts have discovered the diabetes drug metformin may be able to treat some types of cancer. The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, predicts this type of analysis could be used to repurpose other drugs for unexpected treatments.

According to Health Data Management, Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Josh Denny, M.D., associate professor of biomedical informatics and medicine, and Hua Xu, adjunct associate professor of biomedical informatics, as well as colleagues at Vanderbilt, Columbia University and the Mayo Clinic conducted the study.

Astonishingly, researchers reached the hypothesis that metformin may treat cancer through EHR analysis. iHealth Beat reports that researchers analyzed EHR records and tumor records to uncover this correlation. The drug was found to have an effect on certain cancers, including breast cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer, and prostate cancer.

“Our EHR allowed us to delve into details of treatment and response - cancer staging, control of cancer, the various timelines involved and cancer subtypes,” Denny said. “We’re now building on this study, pursuing opportunities for using our EHR to look at all drug exposures across a given disease - starting with cancer. We’re trying to find other signals that may look like metformin in terms of affecting patient outcomes.”

Researchers analyzed the patients' five-year survival rates when exposed and not exposed to metformin.

“Large EHRs are valuable sources for drug repurposing studies. Our findings validate the beneficial effects of metformin for cancer survival. Ongoing and future clinical trials of metformin for specific subtypes of cancer may lead to new opportunities for chemotherapy,” explain researchers. “This study serves as a model for using EHRs and informatics approaches to robustly and inexpensively validate drugs for repurposing.”