Elderly women in Canada's British Columbia more likely to receive inappropriate prescriptions: study

Nearly one in three women over age 65 in Canada's province of British Columbia received inappropriate prescription drugs in 2013, according to a study released by the University of British Columbia (UBC) on Thursday.

"The effect of a patient's sex on the risk of inappropriate prescribing is of tremendous clinical and social concern," said Steve Morgan, professor at UBC's School of Population and Public Health and principal investigator of the study.

The work analyzed population-based health-care datasets to find out which medical and non-medical factors influence patients' risk of receiving prescription medicines on the American Geriatrics Society's list of drugs that should be avoided for older patients. The biggest non-medical risk factor was an individual's sex.

The authors found that, even when results were adjusted for all other risk factors, women were as much as 23 percent more likely than men to be prescribed inappropriate drugs.

"Being a woman is double jeopardy when it comes to taking medications. Women metabolize drugs differently than men. Gender roles and social circumstances also place them at risk," said Dr. Cara Tannenbaum, scientific director of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research's Institute of Gender and Health.

"However, I expect that by empowering women with knowledge about the harms of sleeping pills and other medications, we can help drive decisions to try switching to safer therapies," she said.

Researchers concluded that the sex differences in older adults' risk of receiving a potentially inappropriate prescription are significantly influenced by social dynamics, including differences in patients' care seeking behaviors, as well as differences in the relationships and communications between patients and prescribers.

The study looked at 660,679 British Columbian residents aged 65 and older in 2013. Endi