Unable to confirm presence or absence of PEG in any of the top 50 reported culprits of drug allergy
The top 50 reported drug allergy culprits are listed in Supplementary Text 2, which accounted for 72.5% (400,700/552,897) of all reported drug allergy (Figure 4). In total, there were 2,070 unique drug formulations of these 50 drugs available in Hong Kong. All 2,070 formulations were examined (either by extracting from product inserts or contacting individual pharmaceutical companies) for presence or absence of PEG. Complete excipient information was only available for 36.1% (748/2,070) formulations. Out of these, 124 (16.6%) were confirmed to contain PEG while the remaining 83.4% were confirmed to not contain PEG. Of the remaining 1,322 (63.9%) formulations, excipient information was not available and we were unable to confirm presence or absence of PEG despite attempts at contacting pharmaceutical companies. After re-mapping all 748 formulations with available excipient information back into the original 50 drugs, we were unable to confirm the presence or absence of PEG in any single one of these drugs registered in Hong Kong (i.e. there were formulations with unknown excipient information for each of the top 50 allergy culprits).