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New research funding from the Swiss Data Science Centre and the Swiss National Science Foundation to study drug interactions and Multimorbidity

We are very excited to announce that our group has received two collaboration grants that will strengthen the interdisciplinary research within our group and advance the methods we use to study drug interactions and multimorbidity trajectories in patients with complex diseases.

In February, we received a Swiss Data Science Centre Collaboration Grant for our project “Detecting novel drug combinations associated with adverse events (MedCare)”, which will begin in September 2023. The aim of this project is to combine expertise in pharmacoepidemiology and machine learning to develop interpretable and transparent approaches to detect new signals of harmful drug combinations in large population-level data. To learn more about the Swiss Data Science Centre please click here (external page 6th Call - Swiss Data Science Center)

Additionally, we are very proud to announce that we are one of 19 Swiss National Science Foundation Sinergia grant recipients. Together with Prof. Dr. Milo Puhan, Prof. Dr. Alession Figalli, and Prof. Dr. Nicola Serra, we will explore new approaches to evaluate multimorbidity in our grant entitled “From single disease reductionist research to informed Machine Learning: a new research paradigm for multimorbidity” (you can add this link to the title so people can click and find the project: external page From single disease reductionist research to informed Machine Learning: a new research paradigm for multimorbidity (snf.ch)). This will be an exciting new area of research that will combine epidemiology, mathematics, physics, pharmacology, and medicine. We look forward to starting the project in August 2023.

2022 Pharmacoepidemiology Group Highlights

Awards

This year, our group was very fortunate to receive a number of awards and prizes, both for academic achievements and community service. Below is an overview of the individual awards received by the group members.

Prof. Burden received external page Emerging Leader in Pharmaceutical Sciences award from the University of Toronto faculty of Pharmacy, the largest pharmacy school in Canada and the 4th ranked pharmacy school globally. The award recognizes one alumni for their outstanding achievements in pharmaceutical sciences. Prof. Burden expressed her appreciation for being selected as the 2022 recipient and reflected on how her time at the University of Toronto influenced her career in an interview in May that can be viewed external page here.

Enriqueta Vallejo-Yagüe and her project external page Wall of Scientists were awarded third and first place 2022 ETH Diversity Awards for the individual and organization categories, respectively. The Wall of Scientists was a project led by Dr. Enriqueta Vallejo-Yagüe during her PhD studies in collaboration with other students and staff from ETH and beyond. The Wall of Scientists highlights scientists of all genders, ages, and cultural and ethnic backgrounds. For their efforts, they received first place in the group category.  Additionally, Enriqueta herself, received third place in the individual category in recognition of her role. We are very proud of the work she has done to promote diversity at the ETH!

Wall of scientists

Prof. Burden received the external page 2022 Dandelion Award from the ETH AI Centre. The Dandelion Award recognizes ETH Professors for their efforts to provide their staff and students the freedom and support to develop entrepreneurial endeavours. The award is particularly special as the winners are selected based on the votes and testimonials from ETH students, PhDs, and post-docs.  

Dandelion Award

Maria Luisa Faquetti received a travel scholarship from the International Conference for Pharmacoepdiemiology and Drug Safety and had a spotlight poster during the drug-drug interaction special interest group session. The travel scholarship provided financial support for travel and hotel to attend the largest pharmacoepidemiology conference, which was held in Copenhagen from August 22nd to 26th 2022.

Jovana Radmanovic, who conducted her Master Thesis in our group, received the GSIA prize for outstanding master thesis in the area of pharmaceutical sciences. GSIA is the Swiss Society of Industrial Pharmacists, and selects one thesis annually for the award, which is presented at the Master graduation ceremony. We are very proud of Jovana for this achievement.
 

In the news

Our paper on external page the rising sales and poisonings related to opioids in Switzerland received substantial media coverage this year. This included an article in the ETH News, an interview for the external page SRF Taggeshau, and a radio interview for the external page RSI. Additional, Dr. PD. Stefan Weiler from our group was interviewed by the external page SRF4 news and Prof. Burden appeared in the external page SRF Pulse episode on “Chronische Schmerzen – Leben ohne Opioide”.
Based on the relevance of our work to the public, the external page Schaffauser Nachrichten, published a research profile of Prof. Burden in the August 18th issue.

PhD defences

This year we had the first two PhD students from the group defend their theses at the ETH Zurich. In July, Dr. Adrian Martinez de la Torre successfully defended his thesis entitled “Interdisciplinary methods in pharmacoepidemiology: applications in drug safety and disease progression”, and in October Dr. Enriqueta Vallejo-Yague successfully defended her thesis “Pharmacoepdiemiology of rheumatic diseases. Real-world evidence on safety, effectiveness, and challenges, with attention to body mass index and sex.”

PhD defenses

Adrian and Enriqueta were the first two PhD students in the group of Prof. Burden when the pharmacoepdiemiology research group was founded in 2018. Therefore, the successful defences of both were major milestones for our young research group, and we are incredibly proud of their achievements.


Dr. Martinez de la Torre has continued with the group as a senior scientist and a co-founded external page Methodds, a company that recently received the ETH Spin-off label. Dr. Vallejo-Yagüe has a received a post-doctoral position at the external page Bern Institute of Primary Health Care (BIHAM) that will start in 2023. We are very excited to watch the careers of both Adrian and Enriqueta develop as we are confident that they will be highly successful.
 

Conference highlights


The external page Annual Conference for the American Society of Bone and Mineral Society (ASBMR), the largest conference on bone health, was held in Austin, Texas, this year from September 9th to 12th. Prof. Burden received an oral podium talk for the talk “Increased fracture risk associated with iron overload: a population-based matched cohort study”. This work results from the external page German Research Foundation Grant FerrOs, which is a large consortium grant that aims to investigate the relationship between iron and bone health. The abstract for the talk should be available in a supplement issue of the external page Journal of Bone and Mineral Research in February 2023.


external page The Lancet Summit: Sex and Gender in Rheumatology was held as a virtual event from September 22nd – 23rd. Dr. Enriqueta Vallejo-Yagüe had an oral talk entitled “Sex and gender on the achievement of remission among patients with rheumatoid arthritis: A cohort study in the Swiss Clinical Quality Management cohort".


external page The International Conference for Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety (ICPE) was held in person for the first time since 2019 in Copenhagen from August 22nd to 26th this year. Our group was very well represented at the conference with two oral podium talks, one spotlight poster, and three poster presentations. The abstracts for all presentations can be found external page online.


Oral podium talks

  • Dr. Adrian Martinez de la Torre “Clustering of HbA1c Longitudinal Trajectories in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM)” (abstract #148)
  • Dr. Theresa Burkard “Patient Groups in Rheumatoid Arthritis Identified by Deep Learning Respond Differently to Biologic or Targeted Synthetic disease modifying antirheumatic drugs

Spotlight Poster Presentation

  • Maria Luisa Faquetti “Age and sex differences in polypharmacy patterns in new users of metformin: a UK-based descriptive study” (abstract #647)

Poster Presentations

  • Dr. Enriqueta Vallejo-Yagüe “Are women with rheumatoid arthritis really less likely to achieve remission with biologics? A cohort study in the Swiss Clinical Quality Management cohort.” (abstract #445)
  • Dr. Adrian Martinez de la Torre “Bayesian Nonparametric Comorbidity Analysis of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM)” (abstract #1085)
  • Maria Luisa Faquetti “Personalized prescribing in type 2 diabetes following the 2015 UK treatment guidelines: description of NIAD utilization and polypharmacy patterns” (abstract #1167) 
ICPE 2022

 

external page The European Alliance of Associations for Rheumatology (EULAR) Annual Congress was held in person for the first time since 2019 in Copenhagen from the 1st – 4th of June. Dr. Enriqueta Vallejo-Yague and Dr. Theresa Burkard, who had two poster presentations and one oral presentation, respectively, represented our group. The abstracts for the presentations can be found external page online.


Oral podium talk

  • Dr. Theresa Burkard “Patient Groups in Rheumatoid Arthritis Identified by Deep Learning Respond Differently to Biologic or Targeted Synthetic disease modifying antirheumatic drugs”
    Poster Presentations
  • Dr. Enriqueta Vallejo-Yagüe “Are women with rheumatoid arthritis really less likely to achieve remission with biologics? A cohort study in the Swiss Clinical Quality Management cohort.”
  • Dr. Enriqueta Vallejo-Yagüe “Obesity and Lower Likelihood of Achieving Minimal Disease Activity and Remission in Psoriatic Arthritis Patients”
     

Publications

2022 was a very busy and productive year for publications, with 13 publications from our group members.

• Martinez-De la Torre A, Perez-Cruz F, Weiler S, Burden AM (2022) Comorbidity clusters associated with newly treated Type 2 diabetes mellitus: a Bayesian non-parametric analysis. Sci Rep. 12: 20653 (external page pdf)


• Vallejo-Yagüe E, Pfund JN, Burkard T, Clair C, Micheroli R, Möller B, Finckh A, Burden AM. (2022) Lower odds of remission among women with rheumatoid arthritis: A cohort study in the Swiss Clinical Quality Management cohort. PLoS ONE. 17: e0275026 (external page pdf)


• Vallejo-Yagüe E, Burkard T, Micheroli R, Burden AM. (2022) Minimal disease activity and remission in patients with psoriatic arthritis with elevated body mass index: an observational cohort study in the Swiss Clinical Quality Management Cohort. BMJ Open. 12: e061474 (external page pdf)


• Hooijman MF, Martinez-De la Torre A, Weiler S, Burden AM. (2022) Opioid sales and opioid-related poisonings in Switzerland: A descriptive population-based time-series analysis. Lancet Reg Health Eur. 20: 100437 (external page pdf)


• Faquetti ML, Grisoni F, Schneider P, Schneider G, Burden AM (2022) Identification of novel off targets of baricitinib and tofacitinib by machine learning with a focus on thrombosis and viral infection. Sci Rep.12: 7843 (external page pdf)
o Preprint available on ChemRxiv. [doi: 10.33774/chemrxiv-2021-p56dh] (external page pdf)


• Burkard T, Holmberg D, Wretenberg P, Thorell A, Hügle T, Burden AM. (2022) The associations between bariatric surgery and hip or knee arthroplasty, and hip or knee osteoarthritis: propensity score-matched cohort studies. Osteoarthr Cartil Open. 4: 100249 (external page pdf)


• Burkard T, Vallejo-Yagüe E, Hügle T, Finckh A, Burden AM. (2022) Interruptions of biologic and targeted synthetic disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs in rheumatoid arthritis: a descriptive cohort study assessing trends in patient characteristics in Switzerland. BMJ Open. 12: e056352 (external page pdf)


• Vallejo-Yagüe E, Martinez-De la Torre A, Mohamad OS, Sabu S, Burden AM (2022) Drug triggers and clinical characteristics of acute generalized exanthematous pustulosis (AGEP): A literature case series of 297 patients. J Clin Med. 11: 397. (external page pdf)


• Hofbauer LC, Busse B, Eastell R, Ferrari S, Frost M, Müller R, Burden AM, Rivadeneira F, Napoli N, Rauner M. (2022) Bone fragility in diabetes: novel concepts and clinical implications. Lancet Diabetes Endocrinol. 10: 207-220 (external page pdf)


• Van Dalem J, Werkman NCC, van den Bergh JP, Rossi B, Viggers R, Eastell R, Burden AM, Stehouwer CDA, Klungel OH, Brouwers MCGJ, Driessen JHM. (2022) Use of sodium-glucose co-transporter 2 inhibitors, changes in body mass index and risk of fracture: A population-based cohort study. Diabetes Res Clin Pract. 190: 109993 (external page pdf)


• Konstantelos N, Rzepka AM, Burden AM, Cheung AM, Kim S, Grootendorst P, Cadarette SM. (2022) Fracture definitions in observational osteoporosis drug effects studies that leverage healthcare administrative (external page claims) data: a scoping review. Osteoporos Int. 33: 1837-1844. (pdf)


• Abtahi S, Cordtz R, Dreyer L, Driessen JHM, Boonen A, Burden AM. (2022) Biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs and osteoporotic fracture risk in patients with rheumatoid arthritis: a Danish cohort study. Am J Med. 135: 879-888 (external page pdf)

We also have two papers in published in pre-print form that can be viewed online.


• Martinez-De la Torre A, Faquetti ML, Perez-Cruz F, Meier C, Weiler S, Burden AM. (2022) A data-driven approach to identify clusters of HbA1c longitudinal trajectories and associated outcomes in type 2 diabetes mellitus: a large population-based cohort study. medRxiv. external page https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.06.14.22276398


• Vallejo-Yague E, Burkard T, Finckh A, Burden AM, on behalf of the clinicians and patients of the Swiss Clinical Quality Management Program. (2022) Comparative effectiveness of biologics in patients with rheumatoid arthritis stratified by body mass index and sex: a cohort study in SCQM. medRxiv. external page https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.09.30.22280396v1

Publications

Diabetes and bone research in Europe

pharmacoepidemiology

Diabetes mellitus is a widespread metabolic disease, with negative/adverse effects on many organ systems. Diabetes also significantly affects bone health. An increased risk of bone fractures and impaired fracture healing has been observed in patients, but the mechanisms are not fully understood. In order to investigate the links between diabetes and the bone system, the EU project "FIDELIO" will run for four years starting October 2019.

FIDELIO is an EU funded training network through the external page Marie Curie Innovations in Training Networks program. In total 12 partner institutes, include the pharmacoepidemiology group at the ETH Zurich, will train 14 PhD students with the common goal of developing a multidisciplinary approach to investigating the connections between metabolic diseases and the bone system.

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