Potential drug interactions in prescribed and non-prescribed medicinal products for hemodialytic patients

The treatment of Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) requires the use of a large quantity of drugs, a factor related to the increased possibility of detection of Potential Drug Interactions (PDI), which can occur more frequently when it involves the practice of self-medication. This study was conducted with the objective of evaluating the PDI in the drug treatments of patients with CKD on hemodialysis. This was a cross-sectional study with 170 chronic kidney disease patients in a private hemodialysis clinic, from March to May 2015; the analysis of the PDI was done through the Micromedex database version 2.0. A total of 604 PDIs were detected in 74.7% of the study population, of which 501 were among the prescribed drugs, 85 among prescribed and non-prescribed, and 18 among non-prescribed drugs (used for self-medication). There was a predominance of PDI in the male sex (63.1%), under the age of 60 years (72.5%), and with a hemodialysis time of less than 5 years (55.5%). Logistic regression analyses have shown that patients who use five or more drugs are 243 times more likely to have a PDI (OR=243.206; CI=95%) than those who use less than 5 medications. The number of PDIs detected in this study was directly related to the number of drugs used by patients with CKD, showing a potential causal factor between polypharmacy and drug interactions (DI), and self-medication, at the same time, may have influenced this result. The knowledge of this PDI profile, calls more attention of the professionals that accompany the pharmacotherapeutic treatment of these patients.