More half of all drug prescriptions written in the UK every year are for patients who are aged over 65, a What Doctors Don’t Tell You report has discovered. At least 20 per cent of the drugs prescribed are ‘inappropriate’, either because they are too powerful or because they have not been tested for their safety among the elderly.
But the most dangerous practice is ‘polypharmacy’, where several different drugs are prescribed at the same time. It’s a common practice, and one that has never been investigated, and so nobody understands the chemical reaction that this cocktail can cause.
Most elderly Americans are taking at least three drugs at the same time, while one third of UK patients aged over 75 years is on four or more prescription drugs.