Important drug-drug interactions in the elderly

Although drug-drug interactions constitute only a small proportion of adverse drug reactions, they are important because they are often predictable and therefore avoidable or manageable. Their frequency is related to the age of the patient, the number of drugs prescribed, the number of physicians involved in the patient's care and the presence of increasing frailty. The most important mechanisms for drug-drug interactions are the inhibition or induction of drug metabolism, and pharmacodynamic potentiation or antagonism. Interactions involving a loss of action of one of the drugs are at least as frequent as those involving an increased effect. It is likely that only about 10% of potential interactions result in clinically significant events and, while death or serious clinical consequences are rare, low-grade, clinically unspectacular morbidity in the elderly may be much more common. Nonspecific complaints (e.g. confusion, lethargy, weakness, dizziness, incontinence, depression, falling) should all prompt a closer look at the patient's drug list. There are a number of strategies that can be adopted to decrease the risk of potential clinical problems. The number of drugs prescribed for each individual should be limited to as few as is necessary. The use of drugs should be reviewed regularly and unnecessary agents withdrawn if possible, with subsequent monitoring. Patients should be encouraged to engage in a 'prescribing partnership' by alerting physicians, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals to symptoms that occur when new drugs are introduced. Physicians with a responsibility for elderly people in an institutional setting should develop a strategy for monitoring their drug treatment. For those interactions that have come to clinical attention, it is important to review why they happened and to plan for future prevention. Clinicians should also report, via the appropriate postmarketing surveillance scheme, any drug-drug interactions they have encountered. Finally, multidisciplinary education about the nature of physiological aging and its effect on drug handling, and the possible presentations of drug-related disease in older patients, is an important element in reducing interactions in the elderly.