Allergic type I reactions to medicines range in their clinical presentation from rhinitis and urticaria to severe bronchoconstriction and anaphylactic shock. We examined all cases of suspected drug induced reactions classiยฎed as anaphylactic reactions or shock reported in Sweden between 1972 and 1995 with regard to patient characteristics and drug(s) suspected. Some comparisons with drug sales and prescription data were also made. During the study period of a total of 1338 reports concerned anaphylactic/oid shock or reactions with at least a possible causal relation to medicine giving an overall reporting rate of seven cases per million inhabitants per year of drug-induced anaphylaxis. Of these 1338 patients 51 (3.8%) died from their reactions. Among the non-fatal cases, 460 (34.4%) were diagnosed as shock and 827 (61.8%) as anaphylactic reactions. In total 46.3% of all reports concerned men but men were overrepresented among the older patients and among the fatal cases (65%). There were 201 dierent drugs reported as `suspected' them most common of which were dextrans (418 reports), X-ray contrast media (161 reports) and antibiotics (153 reports).
For dextrans the rate of anaphylactic reactions, shock and fatal cases reported were 128,101 and 21 per million bottles respectively. This decreased to 10.3, 9.8, and 0.4 per million bottles after the introduction of preventive treatment with dextran 1 in 1983.
The reporting rate for ionic contrast media were 0.14, 0.13 and 0.02 per 1000 l for reactions, shock and fatal cases respectively whilst for non-ionic contrast media they were 0.7/1000 l for reactions, 0.02/ 1000 l for shock, but there was no report of a fatal case. For phenoxymethylpenicillin the reported rate of anaphylaxis was 0.14 cases per million deยฎned daily doses and for benzylpenicillin it was 3.7 cases per million deยฎned daily doses. During the study period several drugs have been identiยฎed as important causes of anaphylaxis and measures have been taken to decrease the risk of anaphylaxis e.g. the introduction of preventive treatment with dextran 1, the shift from ionic to non-ionic contrast media and the abolition of polyethoxylated castor oil as a solvent. Spontaneous reporting of drug-induced anaphylaxis remains an important surveillance model but needs to be complemented by better quantitative methods.