How mixing medications can be fatal

A large-scale study of home medication consumption has highlighted the danger of mixing drugs.

The study by sociologists at the University of California, San Diego says expecting patients to monitor their own medications can be fatal, as the death of actor Heath Ledger who died from an accidental prescription-drug overdose at age 28, illustrates.

In a study which examined almost 50 million U.S. death certificates from 1983 to 2004, the researchers focused on the 200,000 deaths from medication errors and found a huge increase in fatal domestic medication errors involving alcohol and/or street drugs.

They say the dramatic increase in fatal medication errors is linked to a shift in the location of medication consumption from clinical to domestic settings and people increasingly take their medications at home, away from hospitals and clinics.

Lead author Dr. David P. Phillips, says they wanted to know how many of these fatal errors happen at home, how many involved alcohol and/or street drugs and whether the numbers were increasing.

The team found that deaths at home from combining medications with alcohol and/or street drugs skyrocketed by 3,196 percent, while non-domestic fatal errors which did not involve alcohol or street drugs, showed the smallest increase of just 5 percent.

Domestic medication fatalities not involving alcohol or street drugs increased by 564 percent and non-domestic medication fatalities involving alcohol and/or street drugs - increased by 555 percent.

The researchers say domestic fatal medication errors, combined with alcohol and/or street drugs, have become an increasingly important health problem.

Dr. Phillips says more research on medication errors is called for as well as changes in policy and clinical practice.

The study is published in the July 28 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.