News

AZCERT's Scientific Review Committee has reviewed available evidence for Remdesivir, an antiviral drug used to treat COVID-19, and found that its use is associated with the development of QTc prolongation. This analysis failed to find compelling evidence for a risk of torsades de pointes (TdP) arrhythmia. Therefore, Remdesivir has been added to the QTdrugs List in the Possible Risk of TdP category. The Committee has also added Serdexmethylphenidate, a new prodrug of dexmethylphenidate used to treat ADHD, to the List of Drugs to Avoid (DTA List) in patients with congenital Long QT Syndrome because of its adrenaline-like properties.

New icons to convey different categories of risk... To aid in the review and use of these lists, the CredibleMeds website employs specific icons for the risk categories and the drugs on the List of Drugs to Avoid by cLQTS patients.  To facilitate recognition of each drug’s risk category, the icon’s were recently changed to the following:

The QTdrugs List includes three distinct risk categories for Torsades de Pointes (TdP) and QT prolongation but not all drugs in the List should be considered “QT prolonging”. Because of the inherent complexity of drug-induced QT prolongation and the ensuing risk of developing TdP, AZCERT has sub-divided the QTdrugs List into three categories of risk of causing TdP.1 We want to remind those who wish to use the QTdrugs List in clinical decision making of the differences between these categories and caution that the QTdrugs List should not simply be thought of as a list of “QT-prolonging drugs”… it is not.

Deutetrabenazine (used to treat tardive dyskinesia) and Dexmedetomidine (a sedative) were removed from the  Possible Risk of TdP category and are no longer on the QTdrugs list. Our analysis of new evidence did not support their continued placement on the list.  As demonstrated by these revisions, the QTdrugs list is dynamic and can change frequently.

Informing you of the the following changes made to the QTdrugs List February 25, 2022

The QTdrugs list is dynamic and can change frequently. For that reason and to provide you with the most up-to-date information, AZCERT requires registration for access to the QTdrugs list so you can be informed by email when the list is revised. Please read more to see the latest changes made to the QTDrugs List. To make a quick search of the QTdrugs list for specific drugs we recommend using the CredibleMeds smartphone app (Apple or Android).

"On the QT" provides clinicians, medical students, drug developers and regulators with a basic review of cardiac electrophysiology, the pharmacology of antiarrhythmic drugs, a review of current regulatory guidelines, how to measure the QT and other ECG manifestations of cardiac repolarization as well as possible future direction in these areas.

Drs. C. William (Will) Heise and Raymond Woosley (members of the AZCERT Scientific Advisory Committee) recently published an “Expert Opinion” in the electronic journal Practice Update that is read by thousands of oncologists, cardiologists and oncocardiologists.  The article describes AZCERT's OncoSupport™, a resource for healthcare practitioners that is maintained on the CredibleMeds website.

New evidence for memantine and benperidol (including a thorough QT study, review of case reports, and drug label changes) does not indicate that memantine or benperidol are associated with QT prolongation under normal conditions of use. Therefore these two drugs have been removed from the Possible Risk of Torsades de pointes (TdP) category.  Also, diltiazem has been added to the Conditional Risk of TdP category.

Recent warnings that certain manufacturing lots of several very important medicines have been recalled because the have been found to contain higher than acceptable levels of chemicals known to cause cancer in animals.