Drug‐induced radiation recall reactions and non‐anticancer drugs: A descriptive analysis from VigiBase®

Abstract

Radiation recall reactions are inflammatory reactions confined to previously irradiated tissues, often of drug‐induced etiology, particularly with anticancer therapies. Other drugs, in particular COVID‐19 vaccines, may also be involved. To describe radiation recall reactions under non‐anticancer drugs more precisely, we extracted the cases of radiation recall reactions associated with non‐anticancer drugs from WHO pharmacovigilance database VigiBase®. We performed two analyses from this extraction: a global analysis and an analysis focusing on vaccination‐related issues. We extracted 120 cases corresponding to 269 drugs, of which 130 were non‐anticancer (22 vaccines). Among the non‐anticancer drugs, tozinameran was the most reported treatment (4.46% of cases), followed by levofloxacin (2.97%) and folinic acid (2.60%), dexamethasone (2.23), and ChAdOx1 nCoV‐19 vaccine and prednisone (1.86% each). Among vaccines, tozinameran (54.55% of cases) was the most reported, followed by ChAdOx1 nCoV‐19 (22.73%), HPV and inactivated influenza vaccine (9.09% each), and elasomeran (4.55%). Our study first describes the occurrence of radiation recall reactions during non‐anticancer treatment. It also highlights a potential safety signal with COVID‐19 vaccines.