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How do I use the FAERS search page?
Last updated on July 28, 2025The FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) is a valuable source of real-world evidence about post-market drug safety. The PharmaPendium FAERS Data functionality enables specific searching of FAERS to not only find reports, but also compare and visualize adverse events reported for a drug or group of drugs, helping users more easily identify co-morbidities or potential DDIs not evident during clinical trials.
You can either set up a Summary Table and Graphical View or a Direct FAERS search.
Summary Table and Graphical View
The Summary Table and Graphical View search enables advanced queries and visualization of FAERS reports.
Options include viewing FAERS reports:
- Based on a group of drugs (applying logic operators AND/OR/NOT)
- With comparative view of drugs in a summary table (e.g., view FAERS reports for a drug versus another drug),
- With a graphical representation of the FAERS reports.
- All types of searches include advanced filtering options (e.g., by reporter occupation, age, gender, etc.)
The following tutorial video (7 min) will show you how to perform searches comparing adverse events across drugs or groups of drugs and show how to:
- Change roles (Primary suspect, secondary suspect, concomitant or interacting)
- Use logic operators (AND/OR/NOT) to make groups
- Use compare filters (Date, Age, Gender, (non-)serious, reporter occupation, route of administration)
- Graph view of the data
- Zooming into graph view
- Exporting and saving data
You can download the PharmaPendium search user guide here
Customizing color and ranges of Summary Table
PharmaPendium supports customization of color and ranges of the FAERS summary table view. This supports drug development and regulatory specialists to zoom into the data most relevant for them. For example, they can visually highlight :
- The high incidence of an adverse events caused by drugs and drug classes
- Difference in incidence of adverse events between drugs and drug classes
- Subpopulation trends that may otherwise not be apparent.
The following tutorial video (5 min) will show you how can customize the ranges and colors of the FAERS summary table view. The accompanying slides can be downloaded here
Direct FAERS search
The direct FAERS search options allows you to retrieve information on drugs and adverse events from FAERS reports and filter results by drug role, serious vs not serious outcome, type of adverse event and age/gender of patient. Use this page to directly accessing the FAERS reports from a simple query.
Example searches include:
- Show me all FAERS reports where my drug has been reported
- Show me all reports where my drug is reported as a primary and secondary suspect drug
- Show me all reports where patients are taking only my drug of interest with no other co-medications”
The following tutorial video (5 min) will show you how to retrieve post-market drug safety data using a FAERS direct search and touches upon:
- Selecting drug or drug class of interest
- Select the role of drug (Primary suspect, secondary suspect, concomitant or interacting)
- Use further search limits "sub-filters" (Date, Age, Gender, (non-)serious)
- Filtering results
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