Study Germans swallow 1.5 drugs daily

The Germans swallow medicines every day

05/18/2013

In Germany, every insured person takes an average of 1.5 prescription drugs per day, according to an analysis by the AOK's Scientific Institute (WidO). On average, women consume significantly more medicines than men. Especially in old people, the drug consumption is high.

37.9 billion daily doses of the drug last year
In 2012, a total of 633 million drug packages were prescribed to almost 70 million insured persons in Germany. These packs contained 37.9 billion daily doses, 45 percent more than in 2004. On average, that's 1.5 medicines a day for each insured person. Computational enough in 2004, according to WidO still a remedy on the day for the patient. The Deputy Managing Director of the Scientific Institute of the AOK (WidO), Helmut Schröder, also stated: „It is known that the consumption of medicines, especially in the elderly, is high and increases with the number of diseases. In addition, women generally have 20 percent more drug use than men. "

68,000 different medicines with 2,500 different active ingredients
The range of drug prescriptions can be analyzed using defined daily doses (DDD). With the help of this classification, experts can find out which of the almost 68,000 different prescribed drug packages are consumed with which of the nearly 2,500 different active substances in what quantities per year. Analysis by the AOK's Scientific Institute (WidO) found that hypertension medications were the most widely prescribed, most notably RamiLich (ramipril), a preparation by Winthrop. Overall, 20.8 percent of all prescribed medicines were high blood pressure with ACE inhibitors and sartans. This corresponds to 7.9 billion daily doses.

Most medications are prescribed for the major common diseases
In addition to the high blood pressure and other medicines for patients with cardiovascular diseases, it was mainly against gastrointestinal diseases or for diabetics who were prescribed most frequently. A total of 86 percent of the prescribed daily doses with their 841 individual active ingredients or active ingredient combinations fall on the 20 most prescribed classes of active ingredients. This shows that the major common diseases in Germany are mainly treated with medication. (Sb)

Picture credits: Andrea Damm