Drug · FAERS side-effect profile with label screen

Chlorpheniramine, Ibuprofen and Phenylephrine side effects: what 181 FDA adverse event reports show

Chlorpheniramine Maleate, Ibuprofen, Phenylephrine Hcl · 2 reaction terms · 76 drug–reaction co-reports · data 2026-09-14

Drug class

Nonsteroidal Anti-inflammatory Drug

FDA label (Established Pharmacologic Class) of the closest related product

Label matched

Chlorpheniramine Maleate, Ibuprofen, Phenylephrine Hcl (Advil Multi-Symptom Cold And Flu)

closest FDA label found for this product string; brand list suppressed because the label is a related product, not an exact match

Who reports

181 reports · 1% serious · 0 with death outcome · 77% female

openFDA FAERS counts, all years, deduplication not applied

Used for

temporarily relieves these symptoms associated with the common cold or flu: headache fever minor body aches and pains nasal congestion runny nose sinus pressure sneezing reduces swelling of the nasal passages temporarily restores freer breathing through the nose

FDA label, Indications and Usage

Boxed warning

None in the current label

How to read this page. FAERS is a spontaneous-reporting system: counts are not incidence rates and a signal is not proof of causation. Each reaction below is run through an automated screen — is the term in the FDA label (known), in the indications (the disease being treated), an administrative/coding term, or none of these (unlabeled)? That screen is mechanical text matching, not a causality assessment. The 30 hand-written Bradford Hill assessments are on the causality assessment page. Not medical advice.

Causality screen of the 2 strongest signals

Reporting / coding artifact 1Not in label — unassessed 1

What the badges mean

Reporting / coding artifact An administrative, monitoring or exposure term (product issue, off-label use, 'test normal', overdose...). Not a biological reaction; a high PRR here reflects how reports are coded.
Not in label — unassessed Not found in the label text, not an artifact pattern. This is a genuine candidate for a formal causality assessment (Bradford Hill / WHO-UMC); it has NOT had one here.

Strongest disproportionality signals

Flagged terms (PRR ≥ 2, χ² ≥ 4, n ≥ 10), ranked by PRR; infinite PRRs (no comparator reports) excluded. The EBGM column is a second, shrinkage-based estimate (MGPS) with its 5th percentile EB05 and the BCPNN IC025; a pair flagged by PRR alone is marked PRR-only and should be read as fragile. The strata column recomputes the PRR on serious reports only and flags pairs whose reports are unusually skewed by sex or come mostly from consumers rather than clinicians. 0 further terms are in the interactive explorer. Reaction links open the term's cross-drug page.

Show: hide coding/lab/outcome terms hide indication terms unlabeled only hide PRR-only

Reaction	Reports	PRR 95% CI · ROR · χ²/p	EBGM EB05 · IC025	Label screen	Serious-only & strata	Trial cross-check
Drug effective for unapproved indication	71	280.7 233.9–336.7ROR 459.5 · χ² 19,485 / p <1e-300	260.4 EB05 213.4 · IC025 +6.2 3/3 methods agree	Not in label — unassessed	100% consumer	no trial data cached
Drug effect less than expected	5	40.9 17.2–97.0ROR 42.0 · χ² 157 / p 3e-36	35.1 EB05 15.2 · IC025 +1.6 3/3 methods agree	Reporting / coding artifact	–	no trial data cached

Trial evidence (ClinicalTrials.gov)

Trial cross-check not yet run for this drug (ClinicalTrials.gov pull covers the 800 most-reported drugs first).

Most frequently reported reactions

By raw co-report count, regardless of disproportionality. Common terms here are often the illness itself or generic outcomes.

Reaction	Reports	PRR 95% CI · ROR · χ²/p	EBGM EB05 · IC025	Label screen	Serious-only & strata	Trial cross-check
Drug effective for unapproved indication	71	280.7 233.9–336.7ROR 459.5 · χ² 19,485 / p <1e-300	260.4 EB05 213.4 · IC025 +6.2 3/3 methods agree	Not in label — unassessed	100% consumer	no trial data cached
Drug effect less than expected	5	40.9 17.2–97.0ROR 42.0 · χ² 157 / p 3e-36	35.1 EB05 15.2 · IC025 +1.6 3/3 methods agree	Reporting / coding artifact	–	no trial data cached

Unlabeled candidate signals

These flagged terms were not found in the FDA label text and do not match an artifact pattern. They are the pairs that would merit a structured assessment (temporality, dose-response, biological plausibility, consistency across databases, trial or cohort evidence). The screen has not done that; string-matching misses label wording, and a strong PRR can still be stimulated reporting, co-medication, or the disease itself.

Drug effective for unapproved indication — n=71, PRR 280.7

✓ A hand-written Bradford Hill causality assessment exists for this drug: Ibuprofen (NSAIDs) ↔ Gastrointestinal bleeding.

Want to assess one of these properly? The runbook describes the Bradford Hill / trial-evidence workflow used on the assessment page, and handoff_top1000_signals.csv lists the strongest unassessed pairs across all drugs.

Common questions

What are the most reported side effects of Chlorpheniramine?

In FDA FAERS, the most frequently co-reported reaction terms for Chlorpheniramine are drug effective for unapproved indication. These are report counts, not rates: FAERS has no denominator, reporting is voluntary and uneven, and a term can be reported because of the illness being treated rather than the drug.

Does Chlorpheniramine have an FDA boxed warning?

No. The FDA label retrieved for Chlorpheniramine has no boxed warning; see the label's Warnings and Precautions for the recognised risks.

Do FAERS signals prove that Chlorpheniramine causes these side effects?

No. A disproportionality signal (PRR, ROR) means a reaction is reported more often with this drug than with others in the database. That can reflect a real effect, but also the disease being treated, stimulated reporting after news or litigation, co-medications, or how reports are coded. Causality needs temporality, dose-response, biological plausibility, consistency across data sources and, ideally, trial or cohort evidence. This page screens each term against the FDA label and ClinicalTrials.gov results; it does not establish causation.

Sources & methods

FDA label via openFDA (set ID 7671d104-3c5c-4f63-b6b1-6c91c22592f8, effective 20251003; matched on openfda.generic_name.exact:"CHLORPHENIRAMINE MALEATE, IBUPROFEN, PHENYLEPHRINE HCL")
Bayesian shrinkage measures computed offline over all 1,317,300 cached pairs: BCPNN information component (IC, with Norén closed-form IC025) and MGPS empirical-Bayes geometric mean (EBGM, EB05) with a two-component gamma prior fitted by maximum marginal likelihood (α₁=0.57, β₁=0.02, α₂=1.42, β₂=0.70, w=0.17); unstratified
FAERS pair statistics from the OpenPV build of 2026-09-14 (openFDA count= aggregation, field patient.drug.openfda.generic_name.exact, 2 reaction terms, min 3 co-reports); PRR/ROR with 95% CI, chi-square with Yates correction
Serious-only and stratified counts (serious:1, patient.patientsex, primarysource.qualification) from openFDA count queries; serious-only PRR uses the drug serious report total and the term global serious total (N_serious=11,882,979); strata shown only when n ≥ 20
Seriousness and sex counts from openFDA count=serious, patient.patientsex, seriousnessdeath

Page generated 2026-10-08. Label and PubChem text are retrieved automatically and may lag the current label; always check the current prescribing information. OpenPV is a beta research tool of the Open Source Medicine Foundation.