Assessing liver injury associated with antimycotics:Concise literature review and clues from data mining of the FAERS database

AIM: To inform clinicians on the level of hepatotoxicrisk among antimycotics in the post-marketing setting,following the marketing suspension of oral ketocon-azole for drug-induced liver injury(DILI).METHODS: The publicly available international FAERSdatabase(2004-2011) was used to extract DILI cases(including acute liver failure events), where antimycot-ics with systemic use or potential systemic absorptionwere reported as suspect or interacting agents. The re-porting pattern was analyzed by calculating the report-ing odds ratio and corresponding 95%CI, a measure ofdisproportionality, with time-trend analysis where ap-propriate.RESULTS: From 1687284 reports submitted over the8-year period, 68115 regarded liver injury. Of these,2.9% are related to antimycotics(1964 cases, of which 112 of acute liver failure). Eleven systemic antimycotics(including ketoconazole and the newer triazole deriva-tives voriconazole and posaconazole) and terbinafine(used systemically to treat onychomicosis) generated a significant disproportionality, indicating a post-market-ing signal of risk.CONCLUSION: Virtually all antimycotics with systemic action or absorption are commonly reported in clinically significant cases of DILI. Clinicians must be aware of this aspect and monitor patients in case switch is con-sidered, especially in critical poly-treated patients under chronic treatment.