Cardiac arrhythmias associated with anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) inhibitors: an analysis of the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS)

Background Anaplastic lymphoma kinase tyrosine kinase inhibitors (ALK-TKIs) may provoke cardiac arrhythmias. We conducted this pharmacovigilance analysis to research cardiac arrhythmias associated with ALK-TKIs using the Food and Drug Administration Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS).Research design and methods The first ALK-TKI, named crizotinib, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on 26 August 2011 for the treatment of ALK-rearranged non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). We evaluated ALK-TKIs-induced cardiac arrhythmias, by using the reporting odds ratio (ROR) and information component (IC) for mining the adverse event report signals in the FAERS database between January 2016 and June 2022.Results We identified a total of 362 ALK-TKIs-related cardiac arrhythmia reports which appeared to influence more men (64.44%) than women (30.76%), with a median age of 68 (interquartile range [IQR] 7–74) years. Compared with the full database, ALK-TKIs were detected with pharmacovigilance of cardiac arrhythmias (ROR025 = 1.26, IC025 = 0.26). Crizotinib and alectinib were found to be related to higher reporting of arrhythmias. The median time to onset (TTO) among five ALK-TKI therapies was significantly different (p = 0.044).Conclusion ALK-TKIs present different frequencies of cardiac arrhythmias reporting, with only crizotinib and alectinib producing positive signals in high-level group term (HLGT) level arrhythmia. The time interval between the initial of drug treatment to the onset of arrhythmia varies greatly and cannot be predicted.