Most Hospitalizations in Elders due to Four Drugs

In the "First Do No Harm" file we have this article outlining the dangers inherent in certain medications. All of these meds have been around a long time, and all are "tried and true." Is it maybe time to review their safety or risk benefit ratio? I would take issue with them lumping aspiring with other anti-platelet medications, but that's just my hunch, not based on data. Information on my practice here.

Four Drugs Cause Most Hospitalizations in Older Adults
By ANAHAD O'CONNOR

Blood thinners and diabetes drugs cause most emergency hospital visits for drug reactions among people over 65 in the United States, a new study shows.

Just four medications or medication groups — used alone or together — were responsible for two-thirds of emergency hospitalizations among older Americans, according to the report. At the top of the list was warfarin, also known as Coumadin, a blood thinner. It accounted for 33 percent of emergency hospital visits. Insulin injections were next on the list, accounting for 14 percent of emergency visits.

Aspirin, clopidogrel and other antiplatelet drugs that help prevent blood clotting were involved in 13 percent of emergency visits. And just behind them were diabetes drugs taken by mouth, called oral hypoglycemic agents, which were implicated in 11 percent of hospitalizations.

All these drugs are commonly prescribed to older adults, and they can be hard to use correctly. One problem they share is a narrow therapeutic index, meaning the line between an effective dose and a hazardous one is thin. The sheer extent to which they are involved in hospitalizations among older people, though, was not expected, said Dr. Dan Budnitz, an author of the study and director of the Medication Safety Program at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention...

Acupuncture in the Elderly to Attenuate Stress and Improve Immunity

Acupuncture is so helpful in the elderly population, and can safely alleviate some of the aches and pains and other issues without the use of pharmaceuticals. Unfortunately, the elderly are often the "hardest sell." Since treatment can take more visits before they start to see results than in younger people, they get impatient and want to abandon the series of sessions. This article can offer some good arguments to encourage them to stick with it (pardon the much overused pun.) The points used are a very simple prescription of the most basic immune points, a very simple prescription, indeed. The abstract is copied in its entirety.
(To read more about acupuncture and my practice, please click here.)

Neurosci Lett. 2010 Oct 22;484(1):47-50. Epub 2010 Aug 13.
Acupuncture is effective to attenuate stress and stimulate lymphocyte proliferation in the elderly.

Pavão TS, Vianna P, Pillat MM, Machado AB, Bauer ME.

Laboratory of Cellular and Molecular Immunology, Institute of Biomedical Research, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS), Porto Alegre (RS), Brazil.
Abstract

Acupuncture has increasingly been used to treat many conditions, including psychiatric disorders and immunological-related disorders. However, the effects of acupuncture as stress management and immune functions in the elderly are largely unclear. Here we investigated the effects of acupuncture on stress-related psychological symptoms and cellular immunity in young adults and elderly subjects. The acupuncture treatment consisted of six sessions and the procedures included the insertion of needles at bilateral acupoints LI4, SP6 and ST36. Psychological variables (depression, anxiety and stress) were investigated by means of self-assessment inventories. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were isolated and cultured in vitro to measure mitogen-induced T-cell proliferation as well as cellular sensitivity to dexamethasone. All data were assessed before and after the intervention. Acupuncture was able to significantly reduce depression anxiety (p<0.001) and stress (p<0.001) scores. The intervention also increased T-cell proliferation, with greater intensity in the elderly group (p=0.004). No changes in cellular sensitivity to dexamethasone were observed following acupuncture. We conclude that acupuncture was efficient to attenuate the psychological distress as well as to increase an important feature of cellular immunosenescence.