Department of Pharmacoepidemiology
Associate Professor
Kiyoshi Kubota M.D.

Organizations
The Department of Pharmacoepidemiology was set up in 1993 as a temporary department endowed by a pharmaceutical company (Rhone-Poulenc Rorer) with a time limit of 3-year period. The department has been further renewed three times in 1996, 1999 and 2002 as a department endowed by around 20 pharmaceutical companies located in Japan. Currently, the Department of Pharmacoepidemiology has 1 associate professor, 4 assistant professors, 5 teaching assistants and some postgraduate students. The department also has a dozen of part-time workers.

Teaching Activities
As in other endowment departments in the university, the department has no formal course of classes to which it is responsible. However, the staff in the department has often made the lectures on pharmacoepidemiology and relevant issues. Such special lectures in the University of Tokyo include:
(1)those in a lecture course of "pharmacology" for medical undergraduates and
(2)those in a lecture course of "pharmacology and toxicology"
We also make lectures in other universities (e.g.,Kyoto university).

Research Activities
One of the current main projects in the department is [1] Prescription-Event Monitoring in Japan (J-PEM). J-PEM is a cohort study to compare patients with a "test drug" newly released onto the market with those with "control drugs." Since around 2003, several new activities have been launched including [2] the research into the effective use of the data mining methodologies to detect possible signals from spontaneous reports on suspected drug adverse reactions, [3] the research on the use of antihypertensive drugs in diabetics in sevaral university hospitals in Japan and [4] the population-based case-control study on the relationship between upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGIB) and Non-steroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).
Another project designed by the former Associate Professor Tsutomu Yamazaki (current position: Professor of Clinical Bioinformatics in University of Tokyo) and currently led by Dr. Doubun Hayashi in our department is Japanese Coronary Artery Disease (J-CAD) study [6]. In J-CAD study, cardiac catheterization is performed on all cases (15,506 patients) to select study subjects who are confirmed that they have CAD diagnosed based on the criteria at least in one branch of coronary artery to the extent of 75% or higher in AHA classification. We will plan to report data showing any correlation between incidence rate focusing mainly on cerebrocardiovascular events and other factors such as management of risk factors, type and dosage of medications obtained in the largest cohort ever studied in Japan of patients with coronary artery lesion confirmed by cardiac catheterization, in April 2005

References
  1. Kubota K. Prescription-Event Monitoring in Japan (J-PEM). Drug Saf 25: 441-4, 2002.
  2. Samizo K, Kawabe E, Hinotsu S, Sato T, Kageyama S, Hamada C, Ohashi Y, Kubota K. Comparison of losartan with ACE inhibitors and dihydropyridine calcium channel angtagonists. A pilot study of Prescription-Event Monitoring in Japan. Drug Saf 25: 811-21, 2002.
  3. Kubota K, Dey F, Matar SA, Twizell EH. A repeated-dose model of percutaneous drug absorption. Appl Math Model 26: 529-544, 2002.
  4. Ohyama Y, Funao K, Kawabe E, Hayashi D, Yamazaki T, Iga T, Koide D, Ohe K, Kubota K. Calcium channel blockers and myocardial infarction: A case-control study in a Japanese hospital. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf 11: 487-92, 2002.
  5. Kubota K, Koide D, Hirai T. Comparison of data mining methodologies using Japanese spontaneous reports. Pharmacoepidemiol Drug Saf in press.
  6. JCAD STUDY INVESTIGATORS and Operation Secretariat headed by Hayashi D, Yamazaki T. Design and Rationale of Japanese Coronary Artery Disease (JCAD) Study: The large scale, multi-centered prospective cohort study. J Heart J in Press
Annual Report of the Graduate School of Medicine and The Faculty of Medicine The University of Tokyo Reports for the Period April 2002 - March 2004