Pharmacovigilance aspects: older adults and susceptibility to adverse drug reactions

Abstract

Older adults constitute a vulnerable population group in presenting adverse reactions to medications as part of the polypharmacy consumed in this population. In clinical practice there are several factors that make it difficult to detect adverse drug-induced reactions. Pharmacovigilance is the activity related to the detection, evaluation, understanding and prevention of adverse events, adverse reactions or their suspicions, or any other safety problem related to the use of drugs. Therefore, the objective of this work is to make a description of the susceptibility of older adults to develop adverse reactions to medications. For this, all the published information that was available in the PubMed database was collected. In this sense, a brief identification was made of the changes that occurred in adulthood that lead to the presentation of adverse drug reactions. In addition, adverse drug reactions and adverse drug reaction detection systems were described. It is concluded that physiological changes occur in older adults that affect the development of comorbidities and the need for polypharmacy, which contributes to the presence of adverse drug reactions.