Authors: Michele Thai Emily Reeve Sarah N Hilmer Katie Qi SallieAnne Pearson Danijela Gnjidic
Publish Date: 2016/01/20
Volume: 72, Issue: 5, Pages: 513-521
Abstract
Statins are among the most frequently prescribed medications internationally Older people are commonly prescribed multiple medications and are at an increased risk of drugdrug interactions including statindrug interactions The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review of current evidence on the prevalence of statindrug interactions in older peopleA systematic search of observational studies in Embase Medline and PubMed was conducted Articles were included if they were published in English during the period July 2000–July 2014 and reported on the prevalence of statindrug interactions in people over 65 years of age Two reviewers independently assessed the articles for eligibility and extracted the dataThe search returned 1556 eligible articles A total of 19 articles met the inclusion criteria In studies n = 7 that focused on statin users only the prevalence of potential statindrug interactions assessed using different measures ranged from 019 to 330 In studies that examined drug interactions across a population of both statin users and nonusers n = 12 the prevalence of potential statindrug interactions ranged from 01 to 71 n = 8 and the prevalence of clinically relevant statindrug interactions ranged from 15 to 4 n = 4Current published evidence suggests substantial variations in the prevalence of statindrug interactions and their clinical relevance Further studies are necessary to provide a better understanding of the prevalence of clinically significant statindrug interactions the medications most frequently contributing to statindrug interactions and impact on relevant clinical outcomes in older peopleDanijela Gnjidic is supported by a National Health and Medical Research Early Career Fellowship SallieAnne Pearson is a Cancer Institute NSW Career Development Fellow Emily Reeve is employed by the NHMRC Cognitive Decline Partnership Centre which receives financial support from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council and partners Alzheimer’s Australia and aged care providers HammondCare HelpingHand and BrightwaterAll authors contributed to conception and planning of the article MT ER KQ and DG contributed to manuscript acquisition analysis and interpretation of the data All authors contributed to paper drafting critical revision and have approved the final version of the manuscript
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