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Polypharmacy is becoming increasingly common, especially among the elderly. It often has a negative connotation, but is sometimes necessary or even desirable, and needed to categorize polypharmacy as appropriate or inappropriate. The challenge is in ensuring that this is considered appropriate when necessary. We aimed to develop an evidence-based intervention to reduce the risks associated with using a systematic approach, involving key stakeholders in prescribing and dispensing drugs to the elderly in primary care. The purpose of this study is to identify the key components which are perceived as influencing these behaviours. It is a qualitative study of general practitioners (GPS) and community pharmacists involved in the care of the elderly. The main inclusion criterion is the geographic location. Qualitative data will be generated from one-on-one, semi-structured interviews and processed for thematic content analysis. Our approach integrates the patient pathway in primary care. It considers the fact that GP and pharmacist behaviours are far from being independent. This study represents the first step in the process of developing an intervention theory which involves a crossover between data from the literature and the knowledge of experts, allowing us to interrogate hypotheses about the influences and mechanisms associated with prescribing and dispensing drugs to the elderly in primary care.

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Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a severe anxiety disorder with clinical and social repercussions. The first line of treatment is psychotherapy, but the most advanced forms require, in addition, a drug treatment. Currently, the treatments used are few in number and not very effective. The objective is to review the recent literature on curative drug treatments for PTSD. We conducted a literature review on the Medline database to include articles less than 10 years old dealing with curative drug treatments for PTSD. We identified inclusion and exclusion criteria to frame our research. We first selected articles by reading the title, then the abstract, and finally the full text. Each clinical study was placed in a table with its main characteristics and then analyzed in order to determine the effectiveness of the treatment studied. 51 references were included. Beta-blockers, corticosteroids and D-cycloserine show positive results in combination with various psychotherapy methods. Antiepileptics, oxytocin, atypical antipsychotics and prazosin showed divergent results. The use of prazosin, currently used to treat PTSD-induced sleep disorders, is being questioned. Ketamine, MDMA and cannabinoids have shown satisfactory results in terms of efficacy, but the question of their safety of use remains. The risks of overdose and illegal use should not be overlooked. Molecules such as ketamine, MDMA or cannabinoids will require further studies to conclude their efficacy and safety. They appear to be the most promising molecules currently available for the treatment of PTSD.