Identification of polypharmacy patterns in new-users of metformin using the Apriori algorithm: A novel framework for investigating concomitant drug utilization through association rule mining.

This study is the first to identify and quantify commonly prescribed combinations of drugs compounds in patients with polypharmacy using the Apriori algorithm. The high polypharmacy prevalence at all strata indicates the need to optimize polypharmacy to minimize DDI and ADR.