FDA drug adverse event reports
Drug adverse event reports (FAERS): report id and dates, seriousness (death, hospitalization, life-threatening, disability, congenital anomaly), report type, country, reporter qualification, patient age, age group, sex and weight, reactions with outcomes (MedDRA terms), and every drug in the report with its role (suspect, concomitant, interacting), indication, dosage, route, dates, action taken and harmonised names. Reports carry no names. Filters accept a comma list (any of the values). Pass next_page back as page; null on the last page.
With count_by=<field> the response gives facet counts of the matching records by that field instead of the records: items of {term, count} (top count_limit). Text fields count whole values on their .exact index (e.g. count_by=openfda.manufacturer_name.exact); date fields give a time series grouped by count_interval (items of {period, count}). The other filters narrow what is counted.
Every response includes credits_used: the credits this call cost.
Parameters
| name | type | description |
|---|---|---|
drug | string | Drug name as reported. |
brand | string | Brand name. |
generic | string | Generic name. Example: metformin |
manufacturer | string | Manufacturer name. |
reaction | string | Reaction (MedDRA preferred term, e.g. nausea). |
indication | string | What the drug was taken for. |
serious | true | false | Serious reports only (true) or non-serious only (false). Example: true |
death | true | Only reports with a death. |
hospitalization | true | Only reports with a hospitalization. |
sex | male | female | unknown | Patient sex. |
country | string | Two-letter country where the event occurred. |
reporter | physician | pharmacist | other_health_professional | lawyer | consumer | Reporter qualification. |
role | suspect | concomitant | interacting | Role of the drug filtered on. |
report_id | string | Safety report id. |
q | string | Free-text words; every word must appear somewhere in the record. |
from | string | Earliest date (YYYY-MM-DD) of the route's main date field. |
to | string | Latest date (YYYY-MM-DD). |
search | string | An openFDA query expression added to the filters with AND, for fields the named filters do not cover (e.g. openfda.route:"TOPICAL"). |
sort | received_date | Sort field (default: relevance, or the newest first where noted). |
order | desc | asc | Sort order (default desc). |
limit | integer | Results per page. |
page | integer | Page number (1-based). Pass next_page back as page; null on the last page. |
count_by | string | Count the matching records by this field (an openFDA field name, e.g. classification.exact, openfda.brand_name.exact, or a date field). |
count_limit | integer | Number of top terms for count_by (1-1000; default 100). |
count_interval | year | month | day | Grouping of a date count_by: year (default), month or day. |
Every endpoint also takes fresh, raw, fields (see lean responses and caching).
Example
curl "https://api.api.sh/openfda/v1/adverse-events" \
-H "x-api-key: $APISH_KEY" import os, requests
res = requests.get(
"https://api.api.sh/openfda/v1/adverse-events",
params={},
headers={"x-api-key": os.environ["APISH_KEY"]},
timeout=120,
)
res.raise_for_status()
data = res.json() const url = new URL("https://api.api.sh/openfda/v1/adverse-events");
const res = await fetch(url, { headers: { "x-api-key": process.env.APISH_KEY } });
if (!res.ok) throw new Error(`${res.status} ${await res.text()}`);
const data = await res.json(); Response
A JSON object with the fields described above, plus raw (the source's own data), cached, fetched_at and credits_used. Errors return {"success": false, "error": "…"} with the HTTP status (see errors). A lookup that ran but found nothing (404) costs the price above; refused calls and errors on our side are free (what's charged).