More on risks from prescription medicines (1)

“Half of all Americans over the age of 18 are taking at least one long term prescription medication and one in six Americans take at least three or more prescription medications.”
 
I quote from the article: “Polypharmacy is associated with increased health risks and costs (Preskorn, 2005; Silkey et al., 2005), and can result in potential pharmacokinetically and/or
pharmacodynamically mediated DDIs. These, in turn, set the stage for increased vulnerability to side effects, increased number of prescription drugs used, compliance problems, increased patient morbidity and mortality, and increased health care costs.”

It is time for Americans to wake-up and realize that the ‘cure’ is killing us!
 
Dr. Ann Blake Tracy, Executive Director,
International Coalition For Drug Awareness
www.drugawareness.org & author of Prozac: Panacea or Pandora? – Our Serotonin Nightmare  (800-280-0730)

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Multiple Medication Use in General Practice and Psychiatry: So What?

By Ahsan Y. Khan, M.D., and Sheldon H. Preskorn, M.D.
 
Psychiatric Times  October 2005  Vol. XXII  Issue 12 
 
Multiple medication use is the rule rather than exception in modern therapeutics. Factors affecting the recent increase in utilization of medications include the growth of third-party insurance coverage for drugs; increased marketing efforts to promote new medications to prescribers and directly to consumers; and clinical guidelines recommending long-term treatment for chronic conditions such as high cholesterol, acid reflux disease, heart disease, diabetes, asthma and clinical depression.

This issue is particularly important for those treating patients with
psychiatric illness. According to the data from the 1989 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, patients seen by a psychiatrist were six times more likely to receive multiple psychotropic medications, as compared with those seen by a primary care physician (Nichol et al., 1995). A recent pharmacoepidemiology study found Veterans Affairs Administration outpatients on antidepressants were on more medications than age-matched and gender controls not on antidepressants (Preskorn, 2005).
 
Multiple medication use poses questions for clinicians: What is the extent of polypharmacy in general practice and psychiatry? What factors impact the increase in polypharmacy seen today? What should the clinician consider when treating a patient taking two or more medications concurrently?

Click here for full article.