Polypharmacy for the elderly and associated factors were assessed. A cross-sectional study was conducted using data from the SABE Study (Health, Well-being and Aging), 2006. 1,115 individuals representing 422,377 elderly aged 65 or more, living in São Paulo City, were interviewed. Polypharmacy was defined as the use of five or more medications. A multivariate regression logistics was used. Polypharmacy prevalence was 36%. Female (OR = 1.7; IC 95%: 1.0; 2.9), age over 75 years (OR = 1.9; CI 95%: 1.3; 2.7), higher income (OR = 1.8; CI 95%: 1.2; 2.8), working (OR = 1.8; CI 95%: 1.1; 2.9), regular self assessed health (OR = 1.6; CI 95%: 1.1; 2.3) or poor (OR = 2.6; CI 95%: 1.4; 4.9), hypertension (OR = 2.0; CI 95%: 1.4; 2.9), diabetes (OR = 4.1; CI 95%: 2.2; 7.5), rheumatic diseases (OR = 2.3; CI 95%: 1.5; 3.6) and cardiac problems (OR = 2.9; CI 95%: 1.9; 4.5) were associated positively with polypharmacy. Using only the public health system (OR = 0.5, 95% CI: 0.3; 0.7) was inversely associated with polypharmacy. Medicines for the cardiovascular system and for the alimentary tract and metabolism were the most used. The knowledge of factors associated with polypharmacy, such as those identified in this study, may be useful to alert health professionals about the importance of identifying and monitoring the elderly groups most vulnerable to polypharmacy.

Knowing the profile of medications used during pregnancy may help devising programs to provide information to the patients and continuing education to health care professionals.

The pharmaceutical care provided by a pharmacist in an ambulatory care clinic in Brazil improved BP, adherence to antihypertensive medications, and the social functioning of patients with resistant hypertension.

Intensive monitoring of adherence in patients with uncontrolled hypertension was evaluated over a 6-month period. After that period, only patients well characterized as having resistant hypertension were followed for 12 months. The goal of this study was to evaluate whether adherence to a drug regimen helps to identify patients with resistant hypertension. Forty-four hypertensive patients resistant to a 3-drug regimen (average blood pressure [BP] mm Hg, mean AE standard deviation) were studied prospectively. Each patient was followed for a 12-month period. Adherence to treatment was evaluated through self-report, applying Morisky's questionnaire and the pill count method. Ambulatory BP monitoring and office BP measures were performed. By pill count, 63.6% of the patients were adherent to treatment at the start of the survey and 94% at the end, although 59% of the patients still did not reach normal BP levels. We found that non-adherence was not associated with resistance to antihypertensive treatment. Therefore, after investigation, we concluded that patients who presented with uncontrolled arterial BP may be truly resistant hypertensive to treatment.