Raw data Polypharmacy in Alzheimer's disease patients in Brazil: Guidance for pharmaceutical assistance

Abstract

Background: Elderly patients frequently have concomitant diseases, triggering the necessity of utilizing several different medications, which can cause adverse events associated with therapy, called polypharmacy. This study aimed to evaluate the main concomitant diseases with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and discuss possible interactions between drugs utilized to treat dementia and its comorbidities, and indicate safe medicines for patients with AD . Methods: 41 individuals with AD who withdraw medicines for dementia from the Brazilian public health system (SUS) participated in this study. Data collection was performed using three questionnaires: 1) Clinical Dementia Rating, to verify disease stage; 2) Mini–mental state examination, to measure cognitive impairment; and 3) Sociodemographic analysis, to evaluate concomitant diseases, utilized drugs, drug-drug interactions, among other demographic variables. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS and data was presented as relative frequency. Results: The results of this study showed that the most frequent concomitant diseases with AD are: systemic arterial hypertension, depression, diabetes mellitus, and hypercholesterolemia. Polypharmacy was observed in 95.12% of patients. The pharmacologic classes that presented interactions with AD medications were anxiolytics, antidepressants, antipsychotics, antihypertensives, and antidiabetics. Conclusion: In the present study, polypharmacy in patients with AD and other concomitant diseases has been characterized. The average number of drugs that these patients ingested was seven per day, and this leads to drug interactions, which are potentially damaging to the body. Consequently, we have tried to reduce these interactions, by suggesting drugs that are safer, for example furosemide instead of amlodipine to treat hypertension.