ArticlePharmacoepidemiology and drug safety2019
Anticholinergic and sedative medication use in older community-dwelling people: A national population study in the Netherlands.
Article in Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Quantifying Anticholinergic Burden and Sedative Load in Older Adults with Polypharmacy: A Systematic Review of Risk Scales and Models.Drugs & aging · 2021Pooled it
- Anticholinergic Burden and Fractures: A Systematic Review with Methodological Appraisal.Drugs & aging · 2020Pooled it
- Context Is Medicine: Integrating the Exposome into Neurorehabilitation.Brain sciences · 2025Article
- Anticholinergic and sedative medications use among community dwelling older adults: risk for polypharmacy and poor physical function.BMC geriatrics · 2025Article
- Anticholinergic and Sedative Medication Burden in Croatian Older Adults: EuroAgeism Cohort Findings.Pharmacy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Article
- [Study of anticholinergic burden in chronic treatments of outpatients in the Community Pharmacy].Farmaceuticos comunitarios · 2025Observational
- The association between medication use and health-related quality of life in multimorbid older patients with polypharmacy.European geriatric medicine · 2024Article
- Using pharmacy dispensing data to predict falls in older individuals.British journal of clinical pharmacology · 2021Article
- Quantifying cumulative anticholinergic and sedative drug load among US Medicare Beneficiaries.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2021Article
- Anticholinergic and sedative medication use in older community-dwelling people: A national population study in the Netherlands.Pharmacoepidemiology and drug safety · 2019Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors.
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Abstract
purposeTo identify the proportion of older adults with a high anticholinergic/sedative load and to identify patient subgroups based on type of central nervous system (CNS)-active medication used.
methodsA cross-sectional study of a nationwide sample of patients with anticholinergic/sedative medications dispensed by 1779 community pharmacies in the Netherlands (90% of all community pharmacies) in November 2016 was conducted. Patients aged older than 65 years with a high anticholinergic/sedative load defined as having a drug burden index (DBI) greater than 1 were included. Proportion of patients with a high anticholinergic/sedative load was calculated by dividing the number of individuals in our study population by the 2.4 million older patients using medications dispensed from study pharmacies. Patient subgroups based on type of CNS-active medications used were identified with latent class analysis.
resultsOverall, 8.7% (209 472 individuals) of older adults using medications had a DBI greater than 1. Latent class analysis identified four patient subgroups (classes) based on the following types of CNS-active medications used: "combined psycholeptic/psychoanaleptic medication" (class 1, 57.9%), "analgesics" (class 2, 17.9%), "antiepileptic medication" (class 3, 17.8%), and "anti-Parkinson medication" (class 4, 6.3%).
conclusionsA large proportion of older adults in the Netherlands had a high anticholinergic/sedative load. Four distinct subgroups using specific CNS-active medication were identified. Interventions aiming at reducing the overall anticholinergic/sedative load should be tailored to these subgroups.
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