Abstract:

Background: Diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease. The aim of our study was to evaluate drug- drug interactions and polypharmacy in diabetic patients. Methods: Patients with type 2 diabetes attending our internal medicine and endocrinology policlinics from April 2019 to July 2019 were included to the study. It was designed as a prospective, descriptive and cross-sectional study. The socio-demographic characteristics of diabetic individuals, the drugs they use in the treatment of diabetes, and other accompanying diseases were evaluated according to the ATC classification. In this study, interactions between multiple drugs and polypharmacy were examined. Results: The study population consisted of 526 patients between the ages of 18-87/years (59 ± 11). 69.6% of the patients were women.83.8% of the patients had chronic diseases accompanying diabetes. The most common chronic diseases were hypertension (53.6%), hyperlipidemia (41.4%) and coronary artery disease (27.2%), respectively. 45.01% of the patients were using five or more drugs. The mean number of drugs was found to be 4.49 ± 1.93. Among the drugs used by the patients, 787 drug-drug interactions were found in a total of 429 (81.5%) patients. The average number of interactions was 3.89 ± 3.6 for interaction A 15.2% (n = 81), 16.2% (n = 85) for interaction B, 69.8% (n = 367) for interaction C was, 47.9% (n = 252) for interaction D, and 0.4% (n = 2) for interaction X. The most frequent interaction was found between acetylsalicylic acid and insulin and metformin and angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors. Conclusions: Both the polypharmacy rate and drug-drug interaction rate are high in diabetic patients. The most common type of interaction is type C and type D drug-drug interaction. Attention should be paid to drug-drug interactions in the treatment of diabetes patients.

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