MHRA’s Black Triangle Report

In United Kingdom, there are certain drugs in which although they were granted marketing approval by the Medicines and healthcare product regulatory agency (MHRA), they need to be closely monitored, since limited information were available about these drugs.

One of the key reasons attributed to this may be, less subjects being enrolled in the clinical trials, short therapy duration etc.…thus, in order to identify rare adverse reactions, effect of the drug in different populations or effect of the drug under different co-morbidities, such drugs are tagged with an inverted black triangle (▼) on their package insert, to ensure that these drugs are intensively monitored.

The Commission on Human Medicines (CHM) and MHRA encourages expedited reporting within 15 calendar days of all such drugs with an inverted black triangle symbol if, found to have caused serious or non-serious adverse drug reaction.

You may find the black triangle drugs at the Electronic Medicines Compendium, British National Formulary, Nurse Prescribers’ Formulary etc.… A black triangle symbol may be assigned to any new active drug / vaccine or even a Biosimilar (Biosimilar are similar biological therapeutic products). Black triangle is not restricted to only drugs, it may also include new route of administration, new drug delivery systems or even new patient population.

Black triangle drugs are reviewed every 2 years by the MHRA and monitoring black triangles reports helps in identifying benefit risk profile of drug and unrecognized adverse effects.

Reference:

·         List of medicines under additional monitoring, European Medical Agency (url: http://www.ema.europa.eu/ema/index.jsp?curl=pages/regulation/document_listing/document_listing_000366.jsp&mid=WC0b01ac058067c852 )

·         EMC (https://www.medicines.org.uk/emc/ )

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