Do You Know What Your Med Mixtures Do To You?

More about seniors and medications...

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Older adults in the United States are popping prescription pills, over-the-counter drugs and dietary supplements in record numbers, and in combinations that could be deadly, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.

They said more than half of U.S. adults aged 57 to 85 are using five or more prescription or non-prescription drugs, and one in 25 are taking them in combinations that could cause dangerous drug interactions.

"Older adults in the United States use medicine and they use a lot of it," said Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau of the University of Chicago Medical Center in Illinois, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"While medications are often beneficial, they are not always safe," she said in a telephone interview.

She noted a recent report that estimated U.S. adults over 65 make up more than 175,000 emergency department visits a year for adverse drug reactions, and commonly prescribed drugs accounted for a third of these visits.

Full article

They did not ask the question about why these people were taking so many prescription drugs but that is one that needs to be asked in a study. Do these people go to several physicians to get the medications? Do they not tell each physician what they are already taking? Or worse - does their one primary care physician not realize the interactions of all the medications that are being prescribed?

These are important questions and need to be asked... and so maybe I should get back to doing research....

After the new year I will put forth a questionnaire here [and elsewhere] for readers to respond to.