Prevalence and factors associated with polypharmacy and potential drug interactions in adults in Manaus, Amazonas
Gustavo Magno Baldin Tiguman1, Tayanny Margarida Menezes Almeida Biase1, Marcus Tolentino Silva2
1Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Ciências Farmacêuticas, Campinas, SP, Brasil.
Objective:
To assess the prevalence and factors associated with polypharmacy and the presence of potential drug interactions in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil, in 2019.
Methods:
This was a population-based cross-sectional study conducted with adults aged ≥ 18 years. The presence of drug interactions among people on a polypharmacy regimen (≥ 5 drugs) was investigated on the Micromedex database. Prevalence ratios (PR) with 95% confidence intervals (95%CI) were calculated using Poisson regression model with robust variance, following hierarchical analysis and considering the complex sample design.
Results:
Of the 2,321 participants, 2.8% (95%CI 2.1;3.6) were on polypharmacy regimen, of whom, 74.0% presented drug interactions, usually with four or more drug interactions per person (40.4%) and high severity (59.5%). Polypharmacy was higher among older adults (PR = 3.24; 95%CI 1.25;8.42), people with poor health (PR = 2.54; 95%CI 1.14;5.67), previous hospitalization (PR = 1.90; 95%CI 1.09;3.32) and multimorbidity (PR = 3.20; 95%CI 1.53;6.67).
Conclusion:
Polypharmacy was more frequent among older adults and people with medical problems, who presented more drug interactions.
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