Clinical Pharmacology in the Elderly

The majority of pharmaceutical prescriptions are to patients aged over 55 years, so any new pharmacological substance must be safe for the elderly. Studies of the safety of drugs for the elderly focus on a special subgroup of elderly volunteers with practically no pathological history and who are receiving no medication - the healthy elderly subjects. In order to assess any changes from the norm under medication, it is vital to have hard data on what actually constitutes the norm. This reference provides data on norm values and biological variations for various clinical and laboratory parameters in pharmacological testing in the elderly.