Why are older adults at higher risk for medication related problems?

Older people are at increased risk of medicine-related problems. Learn how to take your medications safely and how to quiz your doctor.

Why your risk increases as you age

Your risk of problems with medicines increases as you age for 2 main reasons.

Changes in your body

Your body changes in many ways as you age. For example, how much water, fat and muscle you have changes. Some health conditions also create further changes in your body. Because of such changes, you might:

• become more sensitive to the effects of medicines
• not be able to process medicines properly
• have difficulty removing medicines from your body
• become more prone to side effects and medicine interactions

Your brain and nerves also change with age, so problems like memory loss or poor eyesight might start to affect the practical aspects of taking medicines. For example, it is easier to accidentally take your medicine twice, or forget to take it at all.

Multiple medicines

You might have been prescribed many different medicines. If you take 5 or more medicines daily, you are twice as likely to have side effects than other people. You are also far more likely to be taking medicines that could interact with each other.

Taking multiple medicines can also mean a greater chance of making mistakes, because you have more medicines to manage that often need to be taken at different times of the day or even week.

How to improve your medicine safety

Ask questions

Your doctor might have already considered your age and increased risk of side effects or mistakes. But it’s worth asking some important questions, such as:

• Why do I need to take this medicine?
• Are there side effects and what should I do if I notice any side effects or symptoms?
• What should I do if I notice any side effects or symptoms?
• What should I do if I don’t feel like my medication is working?
• Are there any precautions I need to take, such as not driving?
• Does this medication interact with my other medicines, both prescription and non-prescription?
• Do I need to have regular tests (e.g. blood, kidney and liver) to check how the medicine is affecting me?
• Is there a way to reduce the number of medicines I’m taking?

You can also use the Question Builder tool to create your question list for the appointment. Prepare your list, then print or email it so you remember what you want to ask.

Keep a medicines list

You can use a medicines list to keep track of:

• what each medicine (prescription and non-prescription) is for
• what the dose of each medicine is
• when and how to use each medicine

To learn how to create your medicines list, go to NPS MedicineWise.

You can also put an app on your phone to remind you when to take your medicines and help everyone involved in your healthcare know what you are taking. You can download the free MedicineWise smartphone app from Google Play or the App Store.

Having an up-to-date medicines list also helps to make sure all of your medicines get reviewed.

Ask for a medicines review

If you take several medicines, ask your doctor or pharmacist for a regular medicines review.

Medicines are ideally reviewed every 6 to 12 months. But you can ask for a medication review at any time, especially when changes are made, including starting new or stopping medicines.

You may be able to have a Home Medicines Review (HMR), where a pharmacist visits you in your home. The review gives you the opportunity to ask the pharmacist about your medicines and how to manage them well. Your doctor will use the results of your review to develop a medication management plan with you. You will need a referral from a GP to have the review.

Talk to your pharmacist or doctor

If you’re taking a lot of medicines, talk to your pharmacist. They might be able to make you a pharmacy pack (also called a blister pack or a Webster pack) that will help you take the right medicines at the right time.

If you have any concerns, talk to your doctor or pharmacist. After discussions, you might have the dose changed or even the medicine changed. But don’t suddenly stop taking your medicines.

Health Letter, July 2013

This month’s article titled, Protect Others by Reporting Your Child’s Problems with Medical Products discusses negative effects of drugs in children and the importance of reporting these adverse events. Another population, the elderly, also is especially vulnerable to harm from drugs. As with young people, it is crucial to report any adverse drug effects involving older adults to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) MedWatch program. Please find the contact information through the article’s link above.

The following article originally appeared in the February 2005 issue of Health Letter.

Many of the studies and much of the information concerning the epidemic of drug-induced disease focuses on people 60 and over. However, some of the changes that eventually lead to great numbers of adverse reactions in older adults (in combination with increased drug use) really begin to occur in the mid-30s. In connection with the idea that drug-induced disease begins to get more common before age 60, it is interesting to note that in a number of studies comparing the way “older” people clear drugs out of the body with the way younger people do, the definition of older is above 50, and younger is below 50.

1. Smaller Bodies and Different Body Composition: Older adults generally weigh less and have a smaller amount of water and a larger proportion of fat than younger adults. Body weight increases from age 40 to 60, mainly due to increased fat, then decreases from age 60 to 70, with even sharper declines from 70 on. Therefore, the amount of a drug per pound of body weight or per pound of body water will often be much higher in an older adult than it would be if the same amount of the drug were given to a younger person. In addition, drugs that concentrate in fat tissue may stay in the body longer because there is more fat for them to accumulate in.

2. Decreased Ability of the Liver to Process Drugs: Because the liver does not work as well in older adults, they are less able than younger people to process certain drugs so that they can be excreted from the body. This has important consequences for a large proportion of the drugs used to treat heart conditions and high blood pressure, as well as many other drugs processed by the liver. The ability of the body to rid itself of drugs such as Valium, Librium, and many others is affected by this decrease in liver function.

3. Decreased Ability of the Kidneys to Clear Drugs Out of the Body: The ability of the kidneys to clear many drugs out of the body decreases steadily from age 35 to 40 on. By age 65, the filtering ability of the kidneys has already decreased by 30 percent. Other aspects of kidney function also decline progressively as people age. This has an effect on the safety of a large number of drugs.

4. Increased Sensitivity to Many Drugs: The problems of decreased body size, altered body composition (more fat, less water), and decreased liver and kidney function cause many drugs to accumulate in older people’s bodies at dangerously higher levels and for longer times than in younger people. These age-related problems are further worsened by the fact that even at “normal” blood levels of many drugs, older adults have an increased sensitivity to their effects, often resulting in harm. This is seen most clearly with drugs that act on the central nervous system, such as many sleeping pills, alcohol, tranquilizers, strong painkillers such as morphine or pentazocine (Talwin), and most drugs that have anticholinergic effects. This latter group includes antidepressants; antipsychotic drugs; antihistamines; drugs used to calm the intestinal tract (for treating ulcers or some kinds of colitis) such as Donnatal, atropine and Librax; antiparkinsonian drugs; and other drugs, such as Norpace.

For all of the drugs in the aforementioned groups that are listed on WorstPills.org, an anticholinergic warning appears, as follows:

Anticholinergic Effects

WARNING: SPECIAL MENTAL AND PHYSICAL ADVERSE EFFECTS

Older adults are especially sensitive to the harmful anticholinergic effects of this drug. Drugs in this family should not be used unless absolutely necessary.

Mental Effects: confusion, delirium, short-term memory problems, disorientation, and impaired attention.

Physical Effects: dry mouth, constipation, difficulty urinating (especially for a man with an enlarged prostate), blurred vision, decreased sweating with increased body temperature, sexual dysfunction, and worsening of glaucoma.

Yet another example of the marked increase in the sensitivity of older adults to drugs has to do with stimulant drugs that are in the same family as amphetamines, or “speed.” Despite the dangers of these drugs for anyone, especially older adults, they are widely promoted and prescribed, including Ornade, TavistD, Entex LA and Actifed. All of these contain amphetamine-like drugs such as pseudoephedrine. For any of these drugs profiled on WorstPills.org, most of which are listed as Do Not Use drugs, the following warning is given:

WARNING

[Name of drug] can cause or worsen high blood pressure. It is especially dangerous for people who have high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, or thyroid disease. People over 60 are more likely than younger people to experience effects on the heart and blood pressure, restlessness, nervousness, and confusion.

5. Decreased Blood-Pressure Maintaining Ability: Because older adults are less able to compensate for some of the effects of drugs, there is yet another reason why they are more vulnerable to adverse effects of drugs and more sensitive to the intended effects. The most widespread example of older adults’ decreased ability to compensate is seen when they get out of bed and/or suddenly rise from a seated position. As you rise, your blood pressure normally falls, decreasing the blood flow to your head and resulting in less blood flow to the brain. Younger people’s bodies can compensate for this: receptors in the neck, sensing that the blood pressure is falling as the person rises, tighten up the blood vessels in other parts of the body, thus keeping the overall blood pressure high enough. In older adults, these receptors do not work as well. Often, upon standing, older adults feel giddy, lightheaded, and dizzy. They may even faint because the blood pressure in the head falls too rapidly.

The ability to maintain a proper blood pressure is further weakened when you use any of a very long list of drugs, the most common examples being high blood pressure drugs. Other categories of drugs that cause an exaggerated blood pressure drop include sleeping pills, tranquilizers, antidepressants, antipsychotic drugs, antihistamines, drugs for heart pain (angina) and antiarrhythmics.

This problem of so-called postural hypotension — the sudden fall in blood pressure on standing, brought about by a combination of aging and drugs — can be catastrophic. The falls that often result can end in hip fractures, a leading cause of death in older adults, or other serious injuries.

6. Decreased Temperature Compensation: Younger adults are more easily able than older people to withstand very high or very low temperatures. They sweat and dilate (widen) blood vessels to get rid of excess heat when it is hot, and constrict (narrow) blood vessels to conserve heat when it is cold. Older adults’ bodies are less able to do this.

As in the case of blood pressure compensation, this “normal” temperature-regulating problem of older adults can be significantly worsened by any of a large number of prescription and over-the-counter drugs, resulting in fatal or life-threatening changes in body temperature. Many older adults’ deaths during heat waves or prolonged cold spells can be attributed to drugs that interfere with temperature regulation. Most of these people did not know they were at increased risk. All drugs on WorstPills.org that contain a warning about anticholinergic effects can have this harmful effect on withstanding heat waves.

7. More Diseases That Affect the Response to Drugs: Older adults are much more likely than younger adults to have at least one disease — such as liver or kidney damage (not just the decreased function of older age), poor circulation, and other chronic conditions that alter their response to drugs. Little is known about the influence of multiple diseases on drug effects in the elderly. One well-understood example, however, is the effect of heart failure on the way people can handle drugs.

When the heart is not able to pump as much blood as it used to, the change that occurs in heart failure, there is also a decrease in the flow of blood to the kidneys. For the same reasons discussed in reason number 3, the reduced flow of blood to the kidneys decreases the kidneys’ ability to rid drugs from the blood and excrete them in the urine.

8. More Drugs and, Therefore, More Adverse Drug Reactions and Interactions: Since older adults use significantly more prescription drugs than younger people, they have greatly increased odds of having a drug reaction caused by the dangerous interaction between two drugs.

Often, older adults take one or more over-the-counter drugs in addition to their prescription drugs. This further increases the likelihood of adverse drug interactions. One of the more common kinds of adverse drug interactions is the ability of some drug to cause a second drug to accumulate to dangerous levels in the body. At the end of the discussion of each drug on WorstPills.org, except for the Do Not Use drugs, there is a list of other drugs that can cause serious adverse interactions.

9. Inadequate Testing of Drugs in Older Adults Before Approval: Although older adults use a disproportionate share of prescription drugs, few of these drugs are adequately tested in older adults before being approved by the FDA.

Dr. Peter Lamy of the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy has stated, “We test drugs in young people for three months; we give them to old people for 15 years.” The FDA is slowly remedying this serious problem by requiring that the people on whom a drug is tested be representative of those who will use the drug if it is approved. Nonetheless, most drugs on the market today, which are heavily used by older adults, were not adequately tested in this age group.

In summary, there are significant differences between younger and older patients, often not realized by doctors or patients. Increasing awareness of these differences will result in the prescription of far fewer drugs to older adults, and those that are prescribed will be given at lower doses in most instances.