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Adverse drug events in people with multimorbidity, polypharmacy and frailty
Safe People
Organisation name
University of Edinburgh
Applicant name(s)
Bruce Guthrie
Funders/ Sponsors
Wellcome Trust
Safe Projects
Project ID
DL_2024_030
Lay summary
As they get older, many people develop multiple long-term conditions that affect their health. People with multiple conditions often take multiple medicines. Medicines help us manage our conditions but they may also cause harm. Some medicines that we take for different types of conditions have shared harms and may interact with the conditions that a person has. This may increase the risks and harms of medicines. This project will explore how medicines contribute to risk of falls and kidney damage, and how their risk varies depending on other conditions or prescriptions that a person has. The aim is to examine the risk of harms associated with different medicines, and whether the risk of medicines varies in people: - With multiple health conditions - On combinations of medicines that may cause the same harm - Taking multiple medicines even if not known to be associated with a specific harm
Public benefit statement
Our population is getting older. Older people often have multimorbidity, polypharmacy and “geriatric syndromes” such as frailty, falls and delirium, and commonly experience adverse drug effects including hospitalization due to falls and acute kidney injury. Frail older adults are at increased risk of adverse outcomes of polypharmacy. Falls and acute kidney injury are common, are often caused by or exacerbated by medicines and are associated with multiple adverse outcomes. Acute kidney injury is also commonly caused by medicines and associated with multiple adverse outcomes. This project will allow us to understand the interplay between the use of prescribed drugs and adverse outcomes (falls/fractures and acute kidney injury) in the context of polypharmacy, multimorbidity and/ or frailty. This project will lead to a better understanding of the management of drug risk in older adults within primary and secondary care. A patient and public group (PPI) were involved in the development of the project, agreeing that the outcomes were important and that understanding how medications contribute to risk is important because drug-related risks are modifiable.
Request category type
Public Health Research
Other approval committees
Latest approval date
07/10/2024
Safe Data
Dataset(s) name
Data sensitivity level
De-Personalised
Safe Setting
Access type
TRE