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FRIDAY, June 25 (HealthDayNews) -- Middle-aged and elderly Americans who cut back on prescription drugs for chronic illnesses because of the expense do so at the expense of their health.
New research shows, for the first time, that people with preexisting chronic medical conditions who curtailed their prescription medications because of cost were 76 percent more likely to then suffer a significant decline in their overall health and 50 percent more likely to have a nonfatal heart attack, stroke or chest pain episode than those who did not cut back.
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The findings are published in the July issue of the American Public Health Association's journal Medical Care.
"The study is consistent with a large body of literature that demonstrates the health consequences and the financial barriers to necessary drugs, and I think we can really hope there will be an impact because there's so much we can do," said Dr. Arlene S. Bierman, the author of an accompanying editorial in the journal, who was previously a research physician at the U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality in Rockville, Md.
Both the use and the cost of prescription drugs have been rising rapidly in the United States. Annual aggregate expenditures increased to $162 billion in 2002, up from $51 billion in 1993, according to Bierman's editorial.
For many people, these rising costs are eroding the health benefits of new and more effective drugs. But there has been little data to show how prohibitively high costs translated into health outcomes.
This study, done by researchers from the University of Michigan and the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System and funded by the National Institute on Aging, is the first to demonstrate harm to health over time -- and over a relatively short period of time, too, just two to three years.
The researchers focused on about 8,000 older adults who were regularly taking prescription medications for heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure or stroke. This put them at a higher risk for later heart-related illness or crisis, problems that can often be prevented with medications.
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