Various medicines are considered unsuitable for older adults due to alterations in pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics, lack of therapeutic efficacy, and/or increased risk of adverse events exceeding potential benefits. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of potentially inappropriate medication among older adults in the city of São Paulo, Brazil. A population-based cross-sectional study was conducted in a sample of 1,254 individuals aged 60 years or older (participants in the SABE Study), representing the elderly population of the city in 2006. Potentially inappropriate medication was defined according to the Beers criteria. Prevalence of potentially inappropriate medication was 28%. Potentially inappropriate medication was associated with polypharmacy (p=0.001), two or more diseases (p=0.011), and female gender (p=0.007). Thirty-six potentially inappropriate medicines were identified, the majority of which involving prescription medications. Specific criteria are needed for the Brazilian population, in addition to awareness-raising on clinical pharmacology in older adults. Prescription protocols and software programs could assist in the process of rational prescribing in this age group.

Introduction-The damaging effects involving drugs boosted by the growing elderly population research for developing and implementing a variety of methods and tools to identify patterns of inappropriate prescribing / use and drug related problems involving this population group. Objective-To assess the prevalence of potentially inappropriate medications (PIM) listed in the 2003 Beers criteria for people aged 60 or more of São Paulo, interviewed by the SABE survey in 2006. Methods-This is a population-based crosssectional study, using secondary data obtained from the SABE survey. The sample consisted of 1258 elderly aged 60 years or more. The final data were weighted and expanded to represent the elderly population in 2006. The drugs were classified according to the Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical Classification System. For data analysis it was used the Stata® with performance of logistic regression. It was considered a significance level of p <0.05. Results-There was a prevalence of 28% using MPI among the elderly. In the analysis by multivariate logistic regression model the variables associated with consumption of PIM were polypharmacy (p = 0.001), comorbidity (p = 0.011) and female gender (p = 0.007) adjusted for frailty, age and difficulty in ADL. This study identified 41 PIM or classes according to the Beers criteria being used by the elderly residents of Sao Paulo in 2006. When analyzing the PIM grouped by the ATC system was noted that the most prevalent was the group with drugs that act on the cardiovascular system (11.2%). Conclusion-Among other problems, the elderly, especially elderly women, still have the difficulty of living with various illnesses leading to the complexity of therapy, usually with polypharmacy and inappropriate drug use-factors that are ratified by this study-a situation exacerbated by the context of altered pharmacokinetics, pharmacodynamics and changes related to body composition and physiology of aging. We suggest the preparation method based on explicit criteria for evaluating the use of medications by elderly adapted for the national reality, taking into account the available drugs in the country, the opinions of Brazilian experts and evidence-based literature in the area of drug use.