Hemin side effects: what 545 FDA adverse event reports show
Drug class
Hemin
Brand names
Panhematin
Who reports
545 reports · 58% serious · 20 with death outcome · 79% female
Used for
PANHEMATIN is a hemin for injection indicated for the amelioration of recurrent attacks of acute intermittent porphyria temporally related to the menstrual cycle in susceptible women, after initial carbohydrate therapy is known or suspected to be inadequate.
What it is
PANHEMATIN (hemin for injection) is an enzyme inhibitor derived from processed red blood cells. Hemin for injection was known previously as hematin. The term hematin has been used to describe the chemical reaction product of hemin and sodium carbonate solution.
Boxed warning
None in the current label
Causality screen of the 3 strongest signals
What the badges mean
- Labeled (related wording) The label describes this effect under different wording (e.g. 'neutropenia' for 'neutrophil count decreased'). Treated as known.
- 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. 2 further terms are in the interactive explorer. Reaction links open the term's cross-drug page.
| Reaction | Reports | PRR 95% CI · ROR · χ²/p | EBGM EB05 · IC025 | Label screen | Serious-only & strata | Trial cross-check |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Device occlusion | 22 | 60.8 40.4–91.6ROR 63.3 · χ² 1,234 / p 1e-270 | 57.9 EB05 40.3 · IC025 +4.0 3/3 methods agree | Reporting / coding artifact | serious n=5 | no trial data cached |
| Infusion site pain | 9 | 27.1 14.2–51.8ROR 27.5 · χ² 201 / p 7e-46 | 25.5 EB05 14.0 · IC025 +2.4 3/3 methods agree | Labeled (related wording) related wording | serious n=3 | no trial data cached |
| Intentional dose omission | 13 | 18.3 10.7–31.3ROR 18.7 · χ² 195 / p 1e-44 | 17.4 EB05 10.2 · IC025 +2.5 3/3 methods agree | Reporting / coding artifact | serious PRR 31.7 | no trial data cached |
Trial evidence (ClinicalTrials.gov)
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Device occlusion | 22 | 60.8 40.4–91.6ROR 63.3 · χ² 1,234 / p 1e-270 | 57.9 EB05 40.3 · IC025 +4.0 3/3 methods agree | Reporting / coding artifact | serious n=5 | no trial data cached |
| Intentional dose omission | 13 | 18.3 10.7–31.3ROR 18.7 · χ² 195 / p 1e-44 | 17.4 EB05 10.2 · IC025 +2.5 3/3 methods agree | Reporting / coding artifact | serious PRR 31.7 | no trial data cached |
| Infusion site pain | 9 | 27.1 14.2–51.8ROR 27.5 · χ² 201 / p 7e-46 | 25.5 EB05 14.0 · IC025 +2.4 3/3 methods agree | Labeled (related wording) related wording | serious n=3 | no trial data cached |
| Product preparation error | 4 | 7.4 2.8–19.7ROR 7.5 · χ² 16 / p 3e-5 | 4.5 EB05 1.9 · IC025 +0.3 | Reporting / coding artifact | serious n=2 | no trial data cached |
| Injection site extravasation | 3 | 9.2 3.0–28.5ROR 9.3 · χ² 15 / p 7e-5 | 4.8 EB05 1.7 · IC025 +0.0 | Labeled (related wording) related wording | – | no trial data cached |
Unlabeled candidate signals
Every screened signal with n ≥ 20 was either labeled, an indication term, or an artifact pattern — no unlabeled candidate stood out in the top signals.
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 Hemin?
In FDA FAERS, the most frequently co-reported reaction terms for Hemin are infusion site pain, injection site extravasation. 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 Hemin have an FDA boxed warning?
No. The FDA label retrieved for Hemin has no boxed warning; see the label's Warnings and Precautions for the recognised risks.
Do FAERS signals prove that Hemin 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 9984267a-4d57-4444-9bb5-16bca7dea691, effective 20260226; matched on
openfda.generic_name.exact:"HEMIN") - 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, fieldpatient.drug.openfda.generic_name.exact, 5 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.