Failing to Take Medications Regularly as Prescribed
Increases Falls by Senior Citizens
Health care providers should discuss this subject
with their patients
May 19, 2010 - Older adults increase their chances
of falling by not taking their medications as directed, according to an
article in the latest edition of the Journals of Gerontology Series
A: Biological and Medical Sciences. This new information comes from
a recent study of Boston-area residents over age 70, which found that
those who sometimes neglected their medications experienced a 50 percent
increased rate of falls compared with those who did not.
Falls can now be added to the growing list of poor
health outcomes associated with non-adherence to medication, said lead
author
Sarah D. Berry, MD, MPH, a research scientist with the Institute
for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife in Boston.
Because non-adherence is common and easy to screen
for, health care providers should discuss this subject with their
patients.
Berry and her co-authors are the first
investigators to study the association between falls and medication
adherence. The team used data gathered from subjects in the Maintenance
of Balance, Independent Living, Intellect, and Zest in the Elderly of
Boston (MOBILIZE Boston) Study, a community-based cohort of seniors
recruited for the purpose of studying novel risk factors for falls.
They examined responses from a total of 246 senior
men and 408 senior women with an average age of 78. Between 2005 and
2008, 376 individuals in this group reported a total of 1,052 falls.
A participant was characterized as having low
medication adherence if he or she answered yes to any of the following
questions:
● Do you ever forget to take your medications?
● Are you careless at times about taking your medications?
● When you feel better do you sometimes stop taking your medications?
Sometimes if you feel worse when taking your medication, do you stop
taking it?
● High adherence was defined as a no answer to every question. In
total, 48 percent of the respondents were classified as having low
medication adherence.
Those in the low-adherence group experienced falls
at an annual rate of 1.5 times that of the high adherence group. This
association persisted after adjusting for other variables, including
age, sex, cognitive function, and total number of medications.
The journal articles authors were supported by the
Hartford Geriatrics Health Outcomes Research Scholars Awards Program,
the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged/Harvard Research Nursing
Home Program funded by the National Institutes of Health, and an
unrestricted grant from Pfizer, Inc.
One-point decrease on social activity scale was
equivalent to being approximately five years older at the start of the
study - risk of death, disability jump
May 19, 2010 - Older adults increase their chances
of falling by not taking their medications as directed, according to an
article in the latest edition of the Journals of Gerontology Series
A: Biological and Medical Sciences. This new information comes from
a recent study of Boston-area residents over age 70, which found that
those who sometimes neglected their medications experienced a 50 percent
increased rate of falls compared with those who did not.
