ArticlePharmacoepidemiology and drug safety2016
Increasing use of prescription drugs in the United Kingdom.
Article in Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 49 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Implementing pharmacogenetic-guided prescribing in general practice: a qualitative process evaluation.Implementation science communications · 2026Article
- Prescribed Medication Burden by Tobacco Smoking and E-Cigarette Use Status.Health science reports · 2026Article
- Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices of Community Pharmacists Regarding Proton Pump Inhibitor (PPI) Use: A Cross-Sectional Study.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- Pre-emptive pharmacogenetic testing in the acute hospital setting: a cross-sectional study.QJM : monthly journal of the Association of Physicians · 2025Article
- High-risk medication errors: Insight from the UK National Reporting and learning system.Exploratory research in clinical and social pharmacy · 2025Article
- Challenges prescribing and dispensing oral antibiotics with poor palatability for paediatric patients: A qualitative interview study with GPs and pharmacists.Exploratory research in clinical and social pharmacy · 2025Article
- Genome-wide associations spanning 194 in-hospital drug dosage change phenotypes highlight diverse genetic backgrounds in concurrent drug therapy.Computational and structural biotechnology journal · 2025Article
- The impact of drug palatability on prescribing and dispensing of antibiotic formulations for paediatric patients: a cross-sectional survey of general practitioners and pharmacists.Family practice · 2024Article
- Impact of ACEIs and ARBs-related adverse drug reaction on patients' clinical outcomes: a cohort study in UK primary care.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2023Article
- Impact of lifestyle factors on dietary vitamin BThe British journal of nutrition · 2023Article
- Review
- Statin-related adverse drug reactions in UK primary care consultations: A retrospective cohort study to evaluate the risk of cardiovascular events and all-cause mortality.British journal of clinical pharmacology · 2022Article
- Article
- Resilience of Medication Adherence Practices in Response to Life Changes: Learning from Qualitative Data Obtained during the COVID-19 Pandemic.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Chronic pain patients' willingness to share personal identifiers on the web for the linkage of medico-administrative claims and patient-reported data: The chronic pain treatment cohort.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2021Article
- Personalized treatment options for chronic diseases using precision cohort analytics.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Medication Management Frameworks in the Context of Self-Management: A Scoping Review.Patient preference and adherence · 2021Article
- Defining polypharmacy: in search of a more comprehensive determination method applied in a tertiary psychiatric hospital.Therapeutic advances in psychopharmacology · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundPrescription drugs are a central component of healthcare worldwide. We investigated changes in drug-prescribing patterns over time in the general population.
methodsSecular trends were analyzed using 1999-2012 prescription data from The Health Improvement Network. Prevalence of receipt of medication prescriptions was computed by age, sex, and therapeutic category for each calendar year. Spearman correlations were computed to assess change over time.
resultsBetween 1999 and 2012, the percentage of the population that received at least one medication prescription increased from 64.5% to 69.2% (rho = 0.96, p < 0.001). The percentage of patients receiving prescriptions for one to four unique agents declined from 45.6% to 42.1% (Spearman's rho = -0.98, p < 0.001). Meanwhile, the percentage receiving five to nine and 10 or more unique agents increased from 14.1% to 17.5% (rho = 0.996, p < 0.001) and 4.7% to 9.6% (rho = 1.000, p < 0.001) respectively. Largest increases were seen in use of drugs for gastrointestinal disease among women and cardiovascular disease among men. In 2012, the most commonly used agents were for infection or nervous system drugs, with 32.0% and 28.9% of patients receiving at least one prescription, respectively.
conclusionsNearly 70% of the United Kingdom population has received prescriptions for one or more medication with increasing proportions receiving prescriptions for five or more. The high rates of medication use increase the complexity and cost of healthcare. These data can be used for public health planning and to design pharmacoepidemiology and comparative effectiveness studies. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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