If you’ve ever wondered why it is that so many people suffer side effects from prescribed drugs, here’s the reason.
Pharmaceuticals are usually prescribed to the over-65s, and yet they are the one group that is almost never included in trials to test if the drug is safe and effective. Instead, new drugs are invariably tested on the young, who are perhaps better able to tolerate them.
In a review of medical trials, researchers at the University of Michigan discovered that just one in five include the elderly, and those that do rarely look at the ramifications of taking the drug, such as its impact on quality of life.
(Source: Journal of General Internal Medicine, February 3, 2011; doi: 10.1007/s11606-010-1629-x).
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