High-risk prescribing and incidence of frailty among older community-dwelling men

D. Gnjidic*, S. N. Hilmer, F. M. Blyth, V. Naganathan, R. G. Cumming, D. J. Handelsman, A. J. McLachlan, D. R. Abernethy, E. Banks, D. G. Le Couteur

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    249 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Evidence about the association between treatment with high-risk medicines and frailty in older individuals is limited. We investigated the relationship between high-risk prescribing and frailty at baseline, as well as 2-year incident frailty, in 1,662 men 70 years of age. High-risk prescribing was defined as polypharmacy (5 medicines), hyperpolypharmacy (10 medicines), and by the Drug Burden Index (DBI), a dose-normalized measure of anticholinergic and sedative medicines. At baseline, frail participants had adjusted odds ratios (ORs) of 2.55 (95% confidence interval, CI: 1.69-3.84) for polypharmacy, 5.80 (95% CI: 2.90-11.61) for hyperpolypharmacy, and 2.33 (95% CI: 1.58-3.45) for DBI exposure, as compared with robust participants. Of the 1,242 men who were robust at baseline, 6.2% developed frailty over two years. Adjusted ORs of incident frailty were 2.45 (95% CI: 1.42-4.23) for polypharmacy, 2.50 (95% CI: 0.76-8.26) for hyperpolypharmacy, and 2.14 (95% CI: 1.25-3.64) for DBI exposure. High-risk prescribing may contribute to frailty in community-dwelling older men.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)521-528
    Number of pages8
    JournalClinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
    Volume91
    Issue number3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Mar 2012

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