Yellow Card data: look up a medicine's reports

The MHRA, the UK medicines regulator, counts every suspected side effect reported through its Yellow Card scheme. Anyone can see the totals on a free web page for each medicine, called a profile. A count shows how many times a problem was reported. It can’t tell you how often it happens.

Side effects that last after stopping are easy to miss in these profiles. They include post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (PSSD) after some antidepressants, post-finasteride syndrome (PFS) after the hair-loss medicine finasteride, and post-Accutane syndrome (PAS) after the acne medicine isotretinoin. A checklist doctors and researchers proposed in 2022 also lists feeling emotionally numb and problems with concentration and memory. After finasteride or isotretinoin, it lists depression too.

If you have one of these conditions, you might just want to know you’re not the only one. A profile can show that others reported the same symptoms. It can’t show how many people have the condition.

How do I find Yellow Card data for a medicine?

Go to the MHRA’s list of profiles and search for the medicine’s active ingredient, not its brand name. The MHRA calls these pages interactive Drug Analysis Profiles, or iDAPs.

The leaflet in your pack names the ingredient. Lustral is sertraline, Propecia is finasteride and Roaccutane is isotretinoin. If your medicine mixes two ingredients and has no profile of its own, look under each one.

1

Check the leaflet

Find the name of the active ingredient.

2

Search the list

Type the ingredient on the MHRA's profiles page, or browse A to Z.

3

Pick a tab

"Yellow Card Overview" shows reports sent straight to the MHRA. The two "Total" tabs add reports from drug companies.

4

Narrow it down

Filter by sex, age, year or seriousness. Then search the list of reactions for your symptom.

At the bottom of each profile is a guide to reading the numbers. Read it first.

What can a count of Yellow Card reports tell me?

It tells you how many times someone suspected the medicine caused a problem and told the MHRA.

The MHRA is clear that a profile can’t give you your own chance of a side effect, because it knows little about how many people took the medicine without problems. And a report doesn’t prove the medicine caused the problem.

You can’t compare two medicines by their counts either. Reports can go up when a side effect is serious, easy to spot or in the news, or when lots of people take the medicine. So a low count doesn’t mean a side effect is rare, and a high one doesn’t mean it’s common.

Quoting one year’s total? Note the date you looked. For now, a report counts in the year it was last updated, so totals can change.

Play video: Yellow Card - What happens after you report

Why are PSSD, PFS and PAS hard to find in the data?

Because a report is filed under the words the person chose, and the form hasn’t always had a name for these conditions.

The term “Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction” has been on the Yellow Card form since February 2022. A report is filed as PSSD if it uses those words. PAS has no term yet in MedDRA, the medical dictionary regulators use to file side effects, so an isotretinoin report can only list symptoms.

In November 2025 Lord Alton, a member of the House of Lords, asked whether older PSSD reports would be updated. The government said no: reports “remain as reported with the terms selected by the original reporter”. Its reason: the term covers a wide range of symptoms, so older reports stay filed symptom by symptom.

So searching a profile for PSSD won’t show everyone who described it. Search for each symptom too: in 2024 the MHRA pointed out that you can search a profile by keyword. Our page on the official names regulators use has more.

Whether a problem lasted after stopping is even harder to find. None of the filters the MHRA describes covers it. But you can ask.

In 2022 someone asked about SSRI antidepressants such as sertraline. They used Freedom of Information (FOI), the law that lets anyone ask a public body for information it holds.

The MHRA’s reply of 28 September 2022 counted 1,762 UK reports of sexual problems received by 7 September. In 389 of those reports, the problem carried on after stopping, and for most of the rest it wasn’t known. These are counts of reports, so they can’t show how often it happens.

To ask your own question, first check the answers the MHRA has already published, in case someone asked before you. Then email foi.request@mhra.gov.uk with your name, a contact address and exactly what you want. Most requests are free, and the MHRA should reply within 20 working days. You could write:

“Please tell me how many UK Yellow Card reports for finasteride, received from 1 January 2020 to 30 September 2026, include sexual side effects. In how many did the reaction continue after the medicine was stopped?”

How do I add my own report?

Anyone can report on the Yellow Card site, as a guest if you like, or in its app. Say clearly if the problem carried on after your last tablet. The MHRA asked for that in a 2024 safety notice on finasteride.

These medicines help many people. If you have side effects, that’s a decision for you and your prescriber. For antidepressants, don’t stop suddenly. For finasteride and isotretinoin, follow what the leaflet says.

Our step-by-step guides cover antidepressants, finasteride and isotretinoin.

Play video: Yellow Card - How to report

Report it: it helps everyone

A doctor’s note helps you. A report to the medicines regulator helps everyone else: it is how patterns get noticed.

• No proof needed. A suspicion is enough, even years after stopping.
• Where: the Yellow Card scheme in the UK, MedWatch in the US.
• Use the right words. If symptoms continued after stopping an SSRI or SNRI antidepressant, write Post-SSRI sexual dysfunction (MedDRA 10086208). After finasteride, write Post 5-alpha-reductase inhibitor syndrome (MedDRA 10082430). PAS has no term yet, so say the symptoms continued after you stopped isotretinoin.

Our reporting guide walks you through it

What else do people ask?

Is a profile a list of a medicine’s side effects? No, the MHRA says. The known side effects are in the leaflet in your pack and the information for doctors. A profile shows what people suspected. Some of those problems may come from the illness the medicine was treating.

Can I download the data? Not at the moment. The MHRA said in August 2026 that it had switched off spreadsheet downloads while it improves the profiles.

Does my old report still count? Yes. The government says the symptoms in older reports are still used when the MHRA looks for patterns. They just won’t show up under the PSSD term.

If you have PSSD, PFS or PAS, your own report can carry the right words from the start: our guide has them ready to copy.

Sources

1. MHRA, What is being reported, Yellow Card site, read 28 October 2026. Profiles are listed “by the name of the substance”. Each “contains a complete listing of all suspected adverse reactions” reported, including those from pharmaceutical companies. There is “a time delay of around one month” before a report appears. Guidance on reading the data sits at the bottom of each profile.
2. MHRA, iDAP release notes, version 1.0.3, released 25 August 2026. The Yellow Card Overview tab includes only reports sent directly by patients, the public and healthcare professionals; the Total Report Profile and Total Reaction Profile tabs add reports received through pharmaceutical companies and have filters. The received year is taken from “the most recent revision” of a report and “can change”. CSV download “is currently disabled”.
3. NHS Specialist Pharmacy Service, Adverse drug reactions: resources to support clinical decisions, last updated 21 September 2026. Section on iDAPs: the Information tab “explains which brand names and combination products are included”; filters include “sex, age, year of report, reaction seriousness and system organ class”; iDAPs “are not available for combination products”. The MHRA’s own page lists profiles by “substance or combination of substances”.
4. MHRA, response to FOI 24/168, 18 March 2024. Filters “such as age (10 year bands), sex, route of administration, report seriousness, year received, and source of report”. The data “does not represent an overview of the potential side effects”. “The likelihood of experiencing an adverse drug reaction … cannot be estimated”. A report “does not necessarily mean that the medicine has caused the reaction”, and reactions “can be part of the condition being treated”. “It is not possible to compare the safety of different medicines by comparing the numbers.” Reporting is influenced by seriousness, ease of recognition, extent of use, promotion and publicity.
5. UK Parliament, written question HL11843. Asked by Lord Alton of Liverpool on 12 November 2025; answered by Baroness Merron for the Department of Health and Social Care on 25 November 2025. Read through the Parliament written questions service on 28 October 2026. The PSSD term was added to MedDRA as a lower-level term in version 24.1 and made available on the Yellow Card website in February 2022. Reports “remain as reported with the terms selected by the original reporter”. “PSSD is recorded if the reporter has specifically used this term at the time of the report.” Because “this term can include a wide range of symptoms it would not be appropriate to recode” older cases. Reports received before the term have “the individual symptoms reported coded as MedDRA terms and available for signal detection”.
6. MHRA, response to FOI 24/016, 31 January 2024: iDAPs “are available for each active substance”; “You can expand fields and use key word searches within the iDAP to explore the reported side effects”.
7. MHRA, FOI 22/938, letter of 28 September 2022, published 17 January 2024. Up to 7 September 2022: 1,762 UK spontaneous suspected reports of sexual dysfunction with an SSRI; 389 (245 + 144) “indicate that the sexual dysfunction persisted after discontinuation of the drug”; 232 did not continue; 1,135 unknown, including people still taking the SSRI. Outcome fields are not mandatory. Report counts are not rates.
8. GOV.UK, How to make a freedom of information (FOI) request, read 28 October 2026: requests in writing, with “a detailed description of the information you want”; a reply “within 20 working days”; “Most requests are free”. MHRA, organisation page: foi.request@mhra.gov.uk and previous releases.
9. MHRA, Yellow Card scheme and How to report, read 28 October 2026: “Anyone can report”; reports as a guest user; the app; “for yourself or for someone else, with their permission”. MHRA, #MedSafetyWeek press release, 6 November 2023: “just a suspicion is enough”.
10. MHRA, Finasteride: reminder of the risk of psychiatric and sexual side effects, Drug Safety Update, 29 April 2024. Report “particularly if a side effect continued or started after treatment was stopped”.
11. UK patient leaflets, electronic Medicines Compendium: Lustral (sertraline), Propecia 1 mg (finasteride) and Roaccutane 10 mg (isotretinoin), opened 28 October 2026.
12. Healy D, Bahrick A, Bak M and colleagues. Diagnostic criteria for enduring sexual dysfunction after treatment with antidepressants, finasteride and isotretinoin. Int J Risk Saf Med 2022;33(1):65-76. Proposed criteria from an expert group. PSSD: ancillary non-sexual symptoms “may include” “emotional numbing” and “cognitive impairment”. Finasteride and isotretinoin: effects that “can occur independently of any sexual difficulties” include “cognitive impairment” and “depression”.
13. Videos: MHRA, Yellow Card - What happens after you report, 12 November 2024; MHRA, Yellow Card - How to report, 12 November 2024.

Sources checked on 28 October 2026. AI-assisted writing and review, not clinical review.