If you take multiple medications, you might be unknowingly taking one drug to treat the side effects of another.In a new study published in the BMJ that looked at the prescription data of older adults in Ontario, Canada, researchers identified 24 common drug combinations that may occur when a drug side effect “is misinterpreted as a new condition, and then a second drug is started to manage the adverse event,” said lead author Paula Rochon, director of research at the Weston and O’Born Centre for Mature Women’s Health at Sinai Health in Toronto. The researchers call this sort of chain reaction a “potentially inappropriate prescribing cascade.”
