Elderly people being 'poisoned' by medication, say drug experts

Elderly patients are being “poisoned” with medication because too little is known about how different drugs interact with each other and correct dosages for older people, experts have said.

Speaking at the House of Lords’ science and technology committee hearing on healthier living in old age, Sir Munir Pirmohamed, Professor of Molecular and Clinical Pharmacology at Liverpool University, said most of his patients are on more than 10 and often more than 20 drugs.

“Those drugs are used at conventional doses and those doses have been tested in younger populations who had exclusion criteria for trials – so they have been tested in people who don’t have the multiple diseases,” he said. “So when we use a drug at a dose which is licensed at the moment, we are often ‘poisoning’ the elderly because of the dosing that we are using.”

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Source: Guardian, 29 October 2019