Letter to the Editor

摘要

To the Editor:Using the data of the Hispanic Established Population for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly (EPESE), Dr Espino and his colleagues found that the taking of more than four medications by elderly Hispanic persons was independently associated with high mortality after adjusting several confounders (1). However, the absolute contribution of polypharmacy to mortality in the elderly Hispanic population is still unknown, In addition, an adjusted hazard ratio of 1.27 with a low limit of 95% confidence interval close to 1 for polypharmacy (1) indicated that the association between polypharmacy and mortality was not strong. Interestingly enough, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and stroke were not associated with mortality (1), which means that polypharmacy could be a marker of cardiovascular disease, hypertension, or stroke, or a combination of all of these Taken together, it is unclear whether reducing polypharmacy to achieve mortality benefit in the elderly Hispanic population should be recommended based on the study in the Journal. As the authors suggested, further study is needed.