Abstract
The observation that the response of elderly patients to drugs differs from the response seen in younger patients is not new nor is it surprising. The effect of increasing age on drug activity was the subject of a series of early studies conducted in the 1940s by K. K. Chen and his colleagues at Eli Lilly. These investigators found that increased age in experimental animals was associated with increased sensitivity to the effects of alcohol (Chen and Robbins, 1944a), morphine (Henderson and Chen, 1948), picrotoxin and secobarbital (Chen and Robbins, 1944b) and ouabain (Chen and Robbins, 1944c). Interestingly, they also found that drug toxicity was not always increased in older animals. For example, the lethal dose of methadone was unaffected by age (Henderson and Chen, 1948).
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© 1979 J. Crooks and I. H. Stevenson
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Bender, A.D. (1979). Drug sensitivity in the elderly. In: Crooks, J., Stevenson, I.H. (eds) Drugs and the Elderly. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-03813-8_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-03813-8_13
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