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Older Americans take more drugs than their younger counterparts, but too often they also take drugs they shouldn't because doctors prescribe them without adequate information, says a study by Duke University Medical Center researchers.
Older people's bodies process drugs differently, so scientists have developed a listing that red-flags certain medications deemed especially likely to cause problems for people over age 65. It's called the Beers list -- named for Mark Beers, a University of California, Los Angeles, geriatrician who developed it in 1991 with a group of experts.
The Duke study found that 20 percent of the elderly patients in one U.S. pharmacy-benefits group were getting prescriptions for at least one medicine on the Beers list. And even though that doesn't mean those drugs were toxic for those patients, many probably could have been replaced by drugs less likely to cause problems, said Duke researcher Lesley Curtis, the report's lead author. The study was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. | 
