Many medicines associated with frailty in older adults

As we age, we tend to develop a number of chronic health conditions and concerns, HealthinAging.org, a resource for information about older adults, wrote on Wednesday. Often, managing health problems can mean that older adults may take many different medications. When older adults take five or more medicines, a scenario called polypharmacy by health experts, this can increase the risk of harmful side effects.

Recently, a team of researchers examined information from a large German study of older adults called Epidemiological Study on Chances for Prevention, Early Detection, and Optimized Therapy of Chronic Diseases at Old Age (Esther) to learn how taking more than five medicines might affect frailty, the condition of being weak and delicate, in older adults.

The researchers looked at information from nearly 2,000 participants in the Esther study, which began in 2000 with nearly 10,000 participants. People in the study were between 50- and 75-years-old when it began. Follow-ups on participants were conducted after two, five, eight and 11 years.

After adjusting for differences in patient characteristics including illnesses, the researchers learned that people who were at risk of frailty, as well as people who were frail, were more likely to be in the polypharmacy group (those who took 5 to 9 medicines) or hyper-polypharmacy (those who took 10 or more medicines) group, compared with people who were not frail.

They also found that people who took between 5 to 9 medicines were one-and-a-half times more likely to become frail within 3 years compared with people who took fewer than 5 medications.

People who took more than 10 medicines were twice as likely to become frail within three years as people who took less than five.

The paper, “Is Polypharmacy Associated with Frailty in Older People? Results From the ESTHER Cohort Study” is in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.