Detection of emerging diseases in occupational health: usefulness and limitations of the application of pharmacosurveillance methods to the database of the French National Occupational Disease Surveillance and Prevention network (RNV3P).

OBJECTIVE: To test data mining methods used in pharmacosurveillance in order to identify potential emerging disease-nuisance associations in the national occupational disease surveillance and prevention network (RNV3P) database.
METHODS: Proportional reporting ratios (PRR) used in pharmacosurveillance were applied to detect disproportional reporting of disease-nuisance associations which are not compensated by the national social security system.
RESULTS: The 24 785 reports of the RNV3P were grouped into 1344 different disease-nuisance associations reported more than twice, of which 422 did not give entitlement to compensation by the social security system. Among these associations, 162 were potentially emergent and generated a signal, of which eight associations involve cancer.
CONCLUSION: This work is the first stage of an exploratory investigation submitting the questions raised to experts and involving participants in the network in reflection on the hypotheses generated.