In the oldest old, higher SBP and PP are associated with resilience to physical and cognitive decline, especially in individuals with pre-existing physical disability.

Patients appreciated discussing their doubts regarding deprescribing potentially inappropriate preventive cardiovascular medication. Furthermore, they acknowledged their GP's expertise and took their opinion toward deprescribing into consideration. The GPs' decisions to deprescribe were influenced by the low CVD risk of the patients, additional risk factors, and the alleged specialist's opinion toward deprescribing. We recommend deprescribing consultations to be patient centered, with GPs addressing relevant themes and probable consequences of deprescribing preventive cardiovascular medication.

Background Multimorbidity and polypharmacy are very common in older adults in primary care. Ideally, general practitioners (GPs), should regularly review medication lists to identify inappropriate medication(s) and, where appropriate, deprescribe. However, it remains challenging to deprescribe given time constraints and few recommendations from guidelines. Further, patient related barriers and enablers to deprescribing have to be accounted for. The aim of this study was to identify barriers and enablers to deprescribing as reported by older adults with polypharmacy and multimorbidity. Methods We conducted a survey among participants aged ≥70 years, with multimorbidity (≥3 chronic conditions) and polypharmacy (≥5 chronic medications). We invited Swiss GPs, to recruit eligible patients who then completed a paper-based survey on demographics, medications and chronic conditions. We used the revised Patients’ Attitudes Towards Deprescribing (rPATD) questionnaire and added twelve additional Likert scale questions and two open-ended questions to assess barriers and enablers towards deprescribing, which we coded and categorized into meaningful themes. Result Sixty four Swiss GPs consented to recruit 5–6 patients each and returned 300 participant responses. Participants were 79.1 years (SD 5.7), 47% female, 34% lived alone, and 86% managed their medications themselves. Sixty-seven percent of participants took 5–9 regular medicines and 24% took ≥10 medicines. The majority of participants (77%) were willing to deprescribe one or more of their medicines if their doctor said it was possible. There was no association with sex, age or the number of medicines and willingness to deprescribe. After adjustment for baseline characteristics, there was a strong positive association between willingness to deprescribe and saying that because they have a good relationship with their GP, they would feel that deprescribing was safe OR 11.3 (95% CI: 4.64–27.3) and agreeing that they would be willing to deprescribe if new studies showed an avoidable risk OR 8.0 (95% CI 3.79–16.9). From the open questions, the most mentioned barriers towards deprescribing were patients feeling well on their current medicines and being convinced that they need all their medicines. Conclusions Most older adults with polypharmacy are willing to deprescribe. GPs may be able to increase deprescribing by building trust with their patients and communicating evidence about the risks of medication use.

lower systolic blood pressure in the oldest-old taking antihypertensives was associated with higher mortality and faster decline in cognitive function.

BackgroundSubclinical hypothyroidism (SCH) is a common condition in elderly people, defined as elevated serum thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) with normal circulating free thyroxine (fT4). Evidence is lacking about the effect of thyroid hormone treatment. We describe the protocol of a large randomised controlled trial (RCT) of Levothyroxine treatment for SCH.MethodsParticipants are community-dwelling subjects aged ≥65 years with SCH, diagnosed by elevated TSH levels (≥4.6 and ≤19.9 mU/L) on a minimum of two measures ≥ three months apart, with fT4 levels within laboratory reference range. The study is a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled parallel group trial, starting with levothyroxine 50 micrograms daily (25 micrograms in subjects <50Kg body weight or known coronary heart disease) with titration of dose in the active treatment group according to TSH level, and a mock titration in the placebo group. The primary outcomes are changes in two domains (hypothyroid symptoms and fatigue / vitality) on the thyroid-related quality of life questionnaire (ThyPRO) at one year. The study has 80% power (at p = 0.025, 2-tailed) to detect a change with levothyroxine treatment of 3.0% on the hypothyroid scale and 4.1% on the fatigue / vitality scale with a total target sample size of 750 patients.Secondary outcomes include general health-related quality of life (EuroQol), fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular events, handgrip strength, executive cognitive function (Letter Digit Coding Test), basic and instrumental activities of daily living, haemoglobin, blood pressure, weight, body mass index and waist circumference. Patients are monitored for specific adverse events of interest including incident atrial fibrillation, heart failure and bone fracture.DiscussionThis large multicentre RCT of levothyroxine treatment of subclinical hypothyroidism is powered to detect clinically relevant change in symptoms / quality of life and is likely to be highly influential in guiding treatment of this common condition.Trial registrationClinicaltrials.gov NCT01660126; registered 8th June 2012.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12902-017-0156-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.