Abstract

Introduction: Potentially inappropriate medication (PIM) use in older adults with dementia is an understudied area. We assessed longitudinal changes in PIM exposure by dementia type following dementia diagnosis.

Methods: We followed 2448 participants aged ≥ 65 years (52% women, 85.5% Caucasian, mean age 80.9 ± 7.5 years) diagnosed with dementia after enrollment in the National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center (2005-2014). We estimated the association between dementia type and PIM annually for 2 years after diagnosis, using Generalized Estimating Equations.

Results:Participants with Lewy body dementia had more PIM use, and participants with frontotemporal dementia had less PIM use than participants with Alzheimer's disease. In the first year following diagnosis, total number of medications increased, on average, by 10% for Alzheimer's disease and 15% for Lewy body dementia (P < .05 for both).

Discussion: A tailored approach aimed at optimizing drug therapy is needed to mitigate PIM exposure to improve medical care for individuals with dementia.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-1-2018

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Alzheimer's & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions, v. 4, p. 1-10.

© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of the Alzheimer’s Association.

This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trci.2017.10.008

Funding Information

This work was supported by grants (R01 AG054130 DM and R01 AG047891 HGA, GA) and by the Yale Pepper Center (P30 AG021342 HGA, GA), Yale Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, Data Management and Statistics Core P50 AG047270 (HA, CR) all from the National Institutes of Health/National Institute on Aging. D.G. is supported by the Bridging Support Fellowship and International Profile Development Fund grant, University of Sydney.

Due to the large number of funding sources, only the first few are listed in this section. For the complete list of funding sources, please download this article.

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