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).