Maurizio Sessa

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My main research area is GERIATRIC PHARMACOEPIDEMIOLOGY.

 

Main research skills:

-          Study design and protocol development for pharmacoepidemiological and clinical studies (i.e. cohort, case-control, case-crossover, case-only, etc.);

-          Biostatistics (i.e. multivariate regression models, machine learning techniques in bioinformatics, etc.) and statistical software programming (i.e. data management with SAS and data analysis with R);

-          Register-based research (i.e. Italian and Danish administrative registers);

-          Case-series, statistical disproportionality analyses and risk factors identification in individual case safety reports databases;

-          Data management, manipulation, and analysis of pharmacokinetic and pharmacogenetic data.

Main teaching skills:

-          Development of teaching activities, course planning, and administration, and examination for Pharmacovigilance and Pharmacoepidemiology courses;

-          Educational activities in Pharmacovigilance and Pharmacoepidemiology for healthcare operators/local pharmacovigilance managers and qualified person for pharmacovigilance;

-          Supervision of Master of Science theses in Pharmacology, Pharmacovigilance, Pharmacoepidemiology and Regulatory Affairs.

Currently, my research interests focus on:

• Inappropriate use of beta-blockers in older patients with heart failure;
• Identification and risk minimization of potentially inappropriate prescriptions in older patients by using Danish administrative registers;
• Machine learning methods for automatized covariate selections to outperform the high-dimensional propensity score algorithm in Danish administrative registers;
• Automatized procedures for the identification and visualization of Pharmacovigilance safety signal in Danish administrative registers.

My research activity in Pharmacovigilance focused on:

• Development of algorithms and standard operative procedures for the identification and prevention of medication errors-induced adverse drug reactions in individual case safety reports;
• Optimization of the causality assessment procedures for medication errors-induced adverse drug reactions;
• Improvement of patient adverse drug reaction reporting through a community pharmacist-based intervention;
• Refining of statistical signal detection techniques for medication errors-induced adverse drug reactions.

My research activity in Pharmacoepidemiology focused on:

• Inappropriate use of beta-blockers in elderly patients with heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease;
• The predictive value of ABCB1, ABCG2, CYP3A4/5 and CYP2D6 polymorphisms for risperidone and aripiprazole plasma concentrations and the occurrence of adverse drug reactions;
• Safety impact of anticancer and immune-modulating biotech drugs in a real-world setting;
• The relationship between gender and the effectiveness of montelukast;
• Effect of the chronic kidney disease on the safety profile of older digoxin users with non-valvular atrial fibrillation;
• Identification of risk factors for the development of contrast media-induced nephropathy;
• Predictors of new oral anticoagulant drug initiation as opposed to warfarin in elderly adults;
• The safety/efficacy/effectiveness of photodynamic therapy with topical photosensitizers in older patients with chronic venous ulcers.

 My research activity in Clinical Epidemiology focused on:        

• Intraoperative assessment of ureteral and graft reperfusion with indocyanine green fluorescence videography (please refer to the publication n. 4);
• Impact of different urological surgical technique on prognosis and functional outcome in elderly patients with urological cancers (please refer to publications n. 1, 24 and 25).

Additional information on my research activities:

• Biostatistician for several research groups (please refer to the publication list and recommendation letters);
• Database developer (PHP + MySQL) and data manager for the several research projects.

Primary fields of research

Pharmacovigilance and Pharmacoepidemiology

Current research

Currently, I’m working on a project focusing on artificial intelligence techniques for subgroup identification in Pharmacoepidemiology.

Possible conflicts of interest

My postdoc was supported by a grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation to the University of Copenhagen (NNF15SA0018404).

Fields of interest

Pharmacovigilance

Pharmacoepidemiology

Clinical epidemiology