Trial reportDrugs & aging2012
Associations between drug burden index and mortality in older people in residential aged care facilities.
Trial report in Drugs & aging, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 43 citations in OpenAlex.
- Association between anticholinergic drug burden and mortality in older people: a systematic review.European journal of clinical pharmacology · 2020Pooled it
- Anticholinergic Drug Burden Tools/Scales and Adverse Outcomes in Different Clinical Settings: A Systematic Review of Reviews.Drugs & aging · 2018Pooled it
- Tools for Assessment of the Appropriateness of Prescribing and Association with Patient-Related Outcomes: A Systematic Review.Drugs & aging · 2018Pooled it
- Quantification of anticholinergic and sedative drug load with the Drug Burden Index: a review of outcomes and methodological quality of studies.European journal of clinical pharmacology · 2017Pooled it
- The Association Between Anticholinergic Medication Burden and Health Related Outcomes in the 'Oldest Old': A Systematic Review of the Literature.Drugs & aging · 2015Pooled it
- Anticholinergic and Sedative Medication Burden in Croatian Older Adults: EuroAgeism Cohort Findings.Pharmacy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- High-Throughput Screening for Prescribing Cascades Among Real-World Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme Inhibitor Initiators.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2025Article
- Quantifying cumulative anticholinergic and sedative drug load among US Medicare Beneficiaries.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2021Article
- The Association Between Drug Burden Index (DBI) and Health-Related Outcomes: A Longitudinal Study of the 'Oldest Old' (LiLACS NZ).Drugs & aging · 2020Article
- Baseline anticholinergic burden from medications predicts incident fatal and non-fatal stroke in the EPIC-Norfolk general population.International journal of epidemiology · 2018Article
- Associations between the Drug Burden Index, Potentially Inappropriate Medications and Quality of Life in Residential Aged Care.Drugs & aging · 2018Article
- Exposure to anticholinergic and sedative medicines as indicators of high-risk prescriptions in the elderly.International journal of clinical pharmacy · 2017Article
- Anticholinergic burden and health outcomes among older adults discharged from hospital: results from the CRIME study.European journal of clinical pharmacology · 2017Article
- Risk of Mortality Associated with Anticholinergic Use in Elderly Nursing Home Residents with Depression.Drugs & aging · 2017Article
- Different methods, different results--how do available methods link a patient's anticholinergic load with adverse outcomes?European journal of clinical pharmacology · 2015Review
- Total anticholinergic burden and risk of mortality and cardiovascular disease over 10 years in 21,636 middle-aged and older men and women of EPIC-Norfolk prospective population study.Age and ageing · 2015Observational
- Evaluating medication-related quality of care in residential aged care: a systematic review.SpringerPlus · 2015Article
- Modifications to the drug burden index calculation may limit interpretation of its association with clinical outcomes in older adults.Neurocritical care · 2014Article
- Article
- Drug Burden Index in older adults: theoretical and practical issues.Clinical interventions in aging · 2014Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe Drug Burden Index (DBI), a measure of an individual's exposure to anticholinergic and sedative medications, is associated with functional impairment in community-dwelling, older people. In people from residential aged care facilities (RACFs), DBI score does not appear to be associated with functional impairment, but is associated with an increased risk of falls.
objectiveWe investigated the associations between increasing DBI score and mortality in older adults living in RACFs.
methodsStudy participants (n = 602; 70.9% female), recruited from 51 RACFs in Sydney, Australia, had a mean ± standard deviation (SD) age of 85.7 ± 6.4 years and a mean ± SD DBI score of 0.58 ± 0.64.
resultsExposure to anticholinergic medication was 33.6% and sedative medications 41.9%. All-cause mortality after a variable follow-up time (774-1269 days) was 36.2% (n = 218), with the leading causes of death classified as stroke (n = 46; 21.1%), ischaemic heart disease/cardiovascular system (n = 44; 20.2%) and pneumonia (n = 31; 14.2%). One-year mortality multivariate models showed that the DBI categories low (n = 260; hazard ratio [HR] 1.13; 95% CI 0.82, 1.57) and high (n = 153; HR 1.19; 95% CI 0.82, 1.74) were not associated with mortality. This lack of a significant association remained after dichotomization into the anticholinergic and sedative components of the DBI.
conclusionsWe found that with high exposure to anticholinergic and sedative medications, there was no significant association between increasing DBI score and all-cause mortality in old individuals living in RACFs. Further research into the adverse effects of medication use on the mortality of institutionalized older individuals is needed.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.