What you get
The drug/event.json endpoint exposes FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS) data — reports from doctors, patients, and manufacturers about suspected side effects, dosing mistakes, and product quality issues. A single record can list several drugs and reactions, so the JSON nests fields under patient and patient.drug.
Who looks at this
Journalists tracking safety signals, pharmacy students comparing reaction counts, and developers building dashboards all start here. It is messy real-world data: a report does not prove a drug caused a symptom, only that someone filed it.
Example request
Paste this into a browser or our Explorer (swap the search term as needed):
GET https://api.fda.gov/drug/event.json?search=patient.patientsex:1&limit=5You should see JSON with meta.results.total telling you how many matches exist.
Fields worth knowing
Try filtering on safetyreportid, serious, receivedate, patient.patientsex, patient.patientonsetage, and patient.drug.medicinalproduct. Date filters on receivedate help when you are studying a specific period.
A few practical tips
Pair serious:1 with a product name to narrow down severe cases. Keep limit small while you learn the shape of a response. openFDA caps most pulls at 1,000 rows per call, so use skip to page through bigger sets.
limit— usually capped at 1,000 per callskip— walk through large result setscount=some_field.exact— quick frequency tables
Before you rely on this data
openFDA Explorer is an independent website. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
FDA public data is useful for research and general interest. It is not medical advice. Talk to a qualified healthcare professional about your health. openFDA data may be incomplete or reported voluntarily — treat it as a starting point, not a verdict.