Fatal drug poisonings in a Swedish general population.docVIP

BMC Clinical Pharmacology BioMedCentral Research article Open Access Fatal drug poisonings in a Swedish general population Anna K J?nsson*1,2, Olav Spigset3,4, Micaela Tj?derborn2, Henrik Druid5 and Staffan H?gg2 Address: 1Nordic School of Public Health, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2Division of Clinical Pharmacology, Link?ping University, Link?ping, Sweden, 3Division of Clinical Pharmacology, St. Olav University Hospital, Trondheim, Norway, 4Department of Laboratory Medicine, Childrens and Womens Health, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway and 5Department of Forensic Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden Email: Anna K J?nsson* - anna.k.jonsson@nhv.se; Olav Spigset - Olav.Spigset@legemidler.no; Micaela Tj?derborn - Micaela.Tjaderborn@liu.se; Henrik Druid - henrik.druid@ki.se; Staffan H?gg - staffan.hagg@liu.se * Corresponding author Published: 27 April 2009 Received: 28 January 2009 Accepted: 27 April 2009 BMC Clinical Pharmacology 2009, 9:7 doi:10.1186/1472-6904-9-7 This article is available from: /1472-6904/9/7 ? 2009 J?nsson et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: Pharmaceutical drug poisonings have previously been reported using single sources of information, either hospital data or forensic data, which might not reveal the true incidence. We therefore aimed to estimate the incidence of suspected fatal drug poisonings, defined as poisonings by pharmaceutical agents, by using all relevant case records from various sources in a Swedish population. Methods: Every seventh randomly selected deceased in three counties in southeastern Sweden during a one-year period was identified in the Cause of Death Register. Relevant case records (de