Scientific glossary · Evidence and regulation

What is pharmacovigilance?

Pharmacovigilance is monitoring the safety of medicines once they are used in the population: collecting, assessing and preventing their adverse effects.

Even the largest phase 3 trials include a few thousand people over a limited time. Rare adverse effects, those that appear after years of use or those affecting groups under-represented in the trials are only detected when hundreds of thousands of people use the medicine. That is the role of pharmacovigilance, also called phase 4.

It relies on reports of suspected adverse reactions from professionals and patients to the health authority (in Mexico, the national pharmacovigilance centre under COFEPRIS), on post-marketing studies and on the analysis of large databases.

Thanks to it, medicine warnings are updated, uses are restricted or, in serious cases, products are withdrawn from the market.

Why it matters in peptide research

Research materials do not go through this system. It is another fundamental difference between a reagent and a registered medicine, even when they share a molecule.

Related terms

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Definition for educational and scientific purposes. It is not medical advice or a recommendation for use. NeoPeptidos products are sold labelled for research use only (RUO).