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+--- Thread: Older adults taking drugs that lead to falls + Implanted living pharmacy for body (/thread-10514.html)
Older adults taking drugs that lead to falls + Implanted living pharmacy for body - C C - Jun 21, 2021
More older adults are taking drugs that can lead to falls
https://www.pharmacist.com/Pharmacy-News/more-older-adults-are-taking-drugs-that-can-lead-to-falls
RELEASE: Older adults increasingly are taking medications that are prescribed for valid reasons but that also elevate their risks for falls, results from a new study indicate. In their analysis of government data, researchers found that the share of patients matching this profile surged from 57% in 1999 to a staggering 94% in 2017.
Deaths attributed to falls among older adults more than doubled over the study period, meanwhile. Major contributors to the trend include more frequent use of antihypertensives and antidepressants within this demographic. Women—in particular, Black females overall and White females ages 85 years and older—appear to be especially vulnerable.
Lead study investigator Amy Shaver and others do not necessarily believe older adults should be deprived of important medications solely because those drugs could increase the risk of falling. However, they do emphasize the importance of awareness. It is critical that patients “look for the warning labels on their medications and ask questions,” said Shaver, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Buffalo School of Public Health and Health Professions. “They should talk to their doctors and pharmacists about what those side effects could mean and what they can do to ensure they stay safe and not fall.”
CDC’s STEADI-Rx campaign seeks to improve collaboration between providers and pharmacists to evaluate patients’ medications and screen them for risk for falls.
The implant that will manufacture & dispense pharmaceuticals in your body
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/this-implant-could-one-day-control-your-sleep-wake-cycles-180977983/
EXCERPTS: In 1926, Fritz Kahn completed Man as Industrial Palace, the preeminent lithograph in his five-volume publication The Life of Man. The illustration shows a human body bustling with tiny factory workers. They cheerily operate a brain filled with switchboards, circuits and manometers. Below their feet, an ingenious network of pipes, chutes and conveyer belts make up the blood circulatory system. The image epitomizes a central motif in Kahn’s oeuvre: the parallel between human physiology and manufacturing, or the human body as a marvel of engineering.
An apparatus currently in the embryonic stage of development—the so-called “implantable living pharmacy”—could have easily originated in Kahn’s fervid imagination. The concept is being developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in conjunction with several universities, notably Northwestern and Rice. Researchers envision a miniaturized factory, tucked inside a microchip, that will manufacture pharmaceuticals from inside the body. The drugs will then be delivered to precise targets at the command of a mobile application. DARPA’s initial, modest goal for the four-and-a-half-year program, which awarded contracts to researchers this
[...] The implantable living pharmacy, which is still in the “proof of concept” stage of development, is actually envisioned as two separate devices—a microchip implant and an armband. The implant will contain a layer of living synthetic cells, along with a sensor that measures temperature, a short-range wireless transmitter and a photo detector. The cells are sourced from a human donor and reengineered to perform specific functions. They’ll be mass produced in the lab, and slathered onto a layer of tiny LED lights.
The microchip will be set with a unique identification number and encryption key, then implanted under the skin in an outpatient procedure. The chip will be controlled by a battery-powered hub attached to an armband. That hub will receive signals transmitted from a mobile app.
[...] If all goes according to plan, remote controllable bio-hybrid microchips could one day become the most intimate form of smart technology in our lives—internal sensors that manage our health as we go about our daily routine, judging via algorithm which drug to make and when to dispense it... (MORE - details)