OBJECTIVES To determine the rate and variability of polypharmacy in nursing home (NH) residents and investigate its relationship to age, sex, functional status, length of stay, and comorbidities. METHODS We conducted a cross sectional, multicenter study that included six nursing homes. Demographic, clinical characteristics, Charlson comorbidity index (CCI), the number and classes of chronic m...

Polypharmacy is the use of more drugs than are necessary for the medical management of a patient. Although in the past, polypharmacy was considered to be harmful, recently it is gaining acceptance to be therapeutically beneficial in many circumstances. Pharmacists who are generally considered as drug experts, are in a unique position to monitor and intervene in patients with polypharmacy and im...

BACKGROUND The increase in the quantities of central nervous system (CNS)-acting medications prescribed has coincided with increases in overdose mortality, suicide-related behaviors, and unintentional deaths in military personnel deployed in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Data on the extent and impact of prescribing multiple CNS drugs among Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans (IAVs) are...

OBJECTIVES To determine patterns of and trends in contributions to central nervous system (CNS) polypharmacy, defined by the Beers Criteria as three or more CNS-active medications of each medication class, of adults aged 65 and older seen in U.S. outpatient medical practices. DESIGN National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (2004-2013). SETTING U.S. outpatient medical care. PARTICIPANTS Vis...

OBJECTIVE Although the standard of treatment for schizophrenia is antipsychotic monotherapy, overall psychotropic polypharmacy including antipsychotic polypharmacy is increasingly practiced by clinicians. However, there are very few studies that assess the prescription patterns of psychotropic drugs for patients with schizophrenia in Korea. The objective of this study is to describe changes in ...

BACKGROUND The objective of this study was to characterize real-world treatment patterns in the prescription of antipsychotic polypharmacy (≥ 2 concurrent antipsychotics) compared with antipsychotic monotherapy for patients with schizophrenia. METHODS This study was a retrospective claims-based analysis of patients (aged 13-64 years) with schizophrenia belonging to an employer-based health pl...

BACKGROUND polypharmacy is an important risk factor for falls, but recent studies suggest only when including medications associated with increasing the risk of falls. DESIGN a prospective, population-based cohort study. SUBJECTS 6,666 adults aged ≥50 years from The Irish Longitudinal study on Ageing. METHODS participants reported regular medication use at baseline. Any subsequent falls, ...

Rates of chronic conditions among pediatrics have been steadily increasing and medications used to treat these conditions have also shown a proportional increase. Most clinical trials focus on the safety of solitary medications in adult patients. However, data from these trials are often times extrapolated for use in pediatric patients who have different pharmacokinetic processes and physical p...

Motivation: The use of multiple drugs, termed polypharmacy, is common to treat patients with complex diseases or co-existing medical conditions. However, a major consequence of polypharmacy is a much higher risk of adverse side effects for the patient. Polypharmacy side effects emerge because of drug-drug interactions, in which activity of one drug may change, favorably or unfavorably, if taken...