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Aphantasia: Drugs

Answer

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is responsible for ensuring medicines, medical devices, and blood components for transfusion meet applicable standards of safety, quality, and efficacy. The MHRA rigorously assesses available data, including from the Yellow Card scheme, and seeks advice from the Commission on Human Medicines, the MHRA’s independent advisory committee, where appropriate, to inform regulatory decisions, including amending the product information.

The MHRA has received a total of eight United Kingdom reports through the Yellow Card scheme associated with the reaction term aphantasia, from 1 January 2021 up to and including 12 December 2025. The following table shows a yearly breakdown of reports associated with aphantasia received from 1 January 2021 up to and including 12 December 2025:

Year	Number of reports
2024	3
2025	5
Total	8

In addition, the following table shows a yearly breakdown of reports received by substance associated with aphantasia from 1 January 2021 up to and including 12 December 2025:

	Year
Substance group name	2024	2025
ARIPIPRAZOLE		1
ESCITALOPRAM	1	2
FINASTERIDE	2
SERTRALINE		1
VENLAFAXINE		1
VORTIOXETINE		1

Please note that each report may list more than one suspect drug. Therefore, the total number of reports received cannot be accurately derived from the figures presented in the above table.

It is important to note that anyone can report to the MHRA’s Yellow Card scheme and the recording of these reports in the Yellow Card database does not necessarily mean that the adverse reactions have been caused by the suspect drug. Many factors must be considered in assessing causal relationships, including temporal association, the possible contribution of concomitant medication, and the underlying disease. We encourage reporters to report suspected adverse reaction reports. The reporter does not have to be sure of a causal association between the drug and the reactions, as a suspicion will suffice.

The number of reports received cannot be used as a basis for determining the incidence of a reaction, as neither the total number of reactions occurring, nor the number of patients using the drug, is known.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

HL12868

Session

2024-26

Subjects

Drugs Yellow card scheme Aphantasia

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk