Population aging is a major challenge of modern society. Life expectancy in Europe has almost doubled in the last hundred years, and years lived with disability are also increasing. Therefore, several researches and projects address the challenges of population aging in order to ensure good health and good quality of life in old age. Studies on frailty syndrome and medication use and burden form an important part of these research. Medication treatment is primarily one of the most effective strategies for disease management. Nevertheless, the adverse health consequences resulting from inappropriate pharmacotherapy were recognized as an important public health challenge with the highest prevalence among older adults. Therefore, evaluation of medication use and burden enables development of appropriate preventive services and public health interventions to reduce drug-related problems in older adults. There are several criteria for monitoring the burden of medication treatment, and among the best known and most commonly used are polypharmacy, potential drug-drug interactions, potentially inappropriate prescribing, the anticholinergic burden and sedative load. Frailty syndrome is an age-related decline in the function of physiological systems, reflected in reduced intrinsic reserves and increased vulnerability to stressor events, which increases the risk of adverse health outcomes. Individuals with frailty have a decreased quality of life and increased risk for falls and fractures, disability, drug-related problems, depression, cognitive decline, dementia, hospitalization, institutionalization, and mortality. Frailty syndrome is not an inevitable result of aging. Some people may experience frailty very early and some older adults may live to very old age without the presence of frailty. Moreover, frailty is a dynamic process, with the possibility of improvement through appropriate detection and interventions. Therefore, it is important to identify risk factors for frailty, especially such risk factors that can be influenced by interventions. The latter include alcohol consumption and the use of medication. Research within the doctoral thesis can be divided into three parts. The aim of the first part is to evaluate the burden of medication treatment on the entire population of older adults in Slovenia with a series of pharmacoepidemiological database studies. In the second part, we focused on the analysis of the prevalence, incidence and characteristics of frailty syndrome among older adults in Slovenia. The aim of the third part of the doctoral thesis is to evaluate the association between the use of medication and alcohol, and frailty syndrome, which has not been studied before.
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