Side effect

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In medicine, a side effect is an effect of the use of a medicinal drug or other treatment, usually adverse but sometimes beneficial, that is unintended. Herbal and traditional medicines also have side effects.

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A drug or procedure usually used for a specific effect may be used specifically because of a beneficial side-effect; this is termed "off-label use" until such use is approved. [1] For instance, X-rays have long been used as an imaging technique; the discovery of their oncolytic capability led to their use in radiotherapy for ablation of malignant tumours.

Frequency of side effects

Possible side effects of nicotine Side effects of nicotine.png
Possible side effects of nicotine

The World Health Organization and other health organisations characterise the probability of experiencing side effects as: [4] [5]

The European Commission recommends that the list should contain only effects where there is "at least a reasonable possibility" that they are caused by the drug and the frequency "should represent crude incidence rates (and not differences or relative risks calculated against placebo or other comparator)". [6] The frequency describes how often symptoms appear after taking the drug, without assuming that they were necessarily caused by the drug. Both healthcare providers [7] and lay people [8] misinterpret the frequency of side effects as describing the increase in frequency caused by the drug.

Examples of therapeutic side effects

Most drugs and procedures have a multitude of reported adverse side effects; the information leaflets provided with virtually all drugs list possible side effects. Beneficial side effects are less common; some examples, in many cases of side-effects that ultimately gained regulatory approval as intended effects, are:

See also

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