ArticleBMC geriatrics2014
Medication and fall injury in the elderly population; do individual demographics, health status and lifestyle matter?
Article in BMC geriatrics, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
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
32 citing papers in PubMed, 71 citations in OpenAlex.
- Exercise reduces the risk of falls in women with polypharmacy: secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial.Scientific reports · 2025Trial
- The Effects of 12-Week Dual-Task Physical-Cognitive Training on Gait, Balance, Lower Extremity Muscle Strength, and Cognition in Older Adult Women: A Randomized Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Trial
- Hip Fractures: Clinical, Biomaterial and Biomechanical Insights into a Common Health Challenge.Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Falls, Sleep Disorders and Cognitive Frailty in Hospitalized Older Adults with Hypertension:A Cross-Sectional Study.Clinical interventions in aging · 2025Article
- Ascertaining injury risk issues through big data analysis: text-mining based analysis of national emergency response data.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Trip-Related Fall Risk Prediction Based on Gait Pattern in Healthy Older Adults: A Machine-Learning Approach.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- The prevalence of polypharmacy and fall-risk-increasing drugs after hospital discharge for hip fracture: A retrospective study.Journal of frailty, sarcopenia and falls · 2022Article
- Impact of a personalised care plan for the elderly calling emergency medical services after a fall at home: The RISING-DOM multi-centre randomised controlled trial protocol.BMC geriatrics · 2022Article
- Persistent polypharmacy and fall injury risk: the Health, Aging and Body Composition Study.BMC geriatrics · 2021Article
- Fall incidents in nursing home residents: development of a predictive clinical rule (FINDER).BMJ open · 2021Observational
- Syndromic Surveillance Data for Accidental Fall Injury.Online journal of public health informatics · 2021Article
- Polypharmacy is a risk factor for hospital admission due to a fall: evidence from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing.BMC public health · 2020Article
- Investigating the characteristics and needs of frequently admitting hospital patients: a cross-sectional study in the UK.BMJ open · 2020Article
- Factors associated with screening positive for high falls risk in fragility fracture patients: a cross-sectional study.BMC musculoskeletal disorders · 2020Observational
- High Prevalence of Fall-Related Medication Use in Older Veterans at Risk for Falls.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2020Article
- Failure to Reach a Consensus in Polypharmacy Definition: An Obstacle to Measuring Risks and Impacts-Results of a Literature Review.Therapeutics and clinical risk management · 2020Review
- Social position and geriatric syndromes among Swedish older people: a population-based study.BMC geriatrics · 2019Article
- Fall-risk increasing drugs and recurrent injurious falls association in older patients after hip fracture: a cohort study protocol.Therapeutic advances in drug safety · 2019Article
- Prevalence, trend and contributing factors of geriatric syndromes among older Swedes: results from the Stockholm County Council Public Health Surveys.BMC geriatrics · 2018Article
- Analysis of fall-related adverse events among older adults using the Japanese Adverse Drug Event Report (JADER) database.Journal of pharmaceutical health care and sciences · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe simultaneous use of several medications is an important risk factor for injurious falls in older people. The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of the number of medications dispensed to elderly persons on fall injuries and to assess whether this relationship is explained by individual demographics, health habits and health status.
methodsA population-based, nested, case-control study on people 65 years and older (N = 20.906) was conducted using data from the Stockholm Public Health Cohort (SPHC) derived from self-administered surveys and linked at the individual level with various Swedish health registers. Fall injuries leading to hospitalization recorded in the Swedish National Patient Register (NPR) were considered as the outcome. The main exposure, obtained from the Swedish Prescribed Drug Register (SPDR), was the number of medications dispensed within 90 days prior to the injurious fall. The injury risk was estimated using adjusted odds ratios (ORs) from logistic regression. Results were adjusted by selected demographic, social circumstances, lifestyle and health status data extracted from the SPHC.
resultsAfter adjusting for common risk factors within demographics, lifestyle, social circumstances and health status, using more than one medication increased the risk of fall injury but no clear dose-response relationship was observed, with point estimates ranging from 1.5-1.7 for the use of two, three, four or five or more medications as compared to using none. An increased risk remained, and was even elevated, after adjusting for the use of fall-risk-increasing drugs (FRIDs).
conclusionsUsing more than one medication affects the risk of injurious falls among older people. The effect of any given number of medications studied remains and is even strengthened after adjusting for individual demographics, health habits, health conditions and the use of FRIDs.
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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.