Older drugs risky for elderly
Older drugs designed to treat mental problems such as delirium, agitation and psychosis may be even more hazardous to the elderly than newer medicines that carry U.S. government warnings, researchers have found.
The Food and Drug Administration warned in April that newer “ antipsychotic medicines such as Johnson & Johnson’s Risperdal and Eli Lilly & Co.’s Zyprexa nearly doubled the risk of death in elderly people with dementia.
The new study said those warnings should have been extended to older drugs such as Haldol and Thorazine, available in generic form, because they posed a risk of death that was 37% higher than the atypical drugs.
Dr. Philip Wang of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and his colleagues found that among the people taking the newer drugs, 14.6% were dead within the first 180 days. The rate was 17.9% for those who began taking the older antipsychotics between 1994 and 2003.
“This is not an inconsequential risk. The elevation in the death rate we’re seeing is over a very short period of time,” Wang said.
His team used a database of 22,890 seniors who had drug insurance benefits in Pennsylvania. The study was published in the Dec. 1 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
