Authors’ Reply to Toda: “The Effects of Fall-Risk-Increasing Drugs on Postural Control: A Literature Review”

Abstract

We thank Dr. Toda [1] for his interesting question. Dr. Toda asked, in response to our literature review [2], whether psychotropic drugs with longer half-lives are more likely to increase fall risk than psychotropic drugs with shorter half-lives. In our paper [2], we concluded that psychotropic fall-risk-increasing drugs (FRIDs) cause impairments in postural control, which is probably one of the mediating factors for the increased fall risk with which these FRIDs are associated. The effects of psychotropic FRIDs on postural control are more pronounced when people are of higher age, use psychotropics at higher daily dosages, for a longer period of time, and when the half-life of the drug is longer. By the latter, we mean that the effects on postural control of benzodiazepines with intermediate to long half-lives ([8 h) sustain for a longer period of time after taking the drug (the so-called hangover effect).