Pharmacoepidemiology in older people: purposes and future directions

Abstract

Knowledge of the benefit/risk ratio of drugs in older adults is essential to optimise medication use. While randomised controlled trials are fundamental to the process of drug development and bringing new drugs to the market, they often exclude older adults, especially those suffering from frailty, multimorbidity and/or receiving polypharmacy. Therefore, it is generally unknown whether the benefits and harms of drugs established through pre-marketing clinical trials are translatable to the real-word population of older adults. Pharmacoepidemiology can provide real-world data on drug utilisation and drug effects in older people with multiple comorbidities and polypharmacy and can greatly contribute towards the goal of high quality use of drugs and well-being in older adults. A wide variety of pharmacoepidemiology studies can be used and exciting progress is being made with the use of novel and advanced statistical methods to improve the robustness of data. Coordinated and strategic initiatives are required internationally in order for this field to reach its full potential of optimising drug use in older adults so as to improve health care outcomes.