GP said result is ‘a thousand hospital admissions due to side effects’
11:02, 28 Oct 2026Updated 11:03, 28 Oct 2026
Dr Amir Khan said overprescribing was a problem for millions of NHS patients(Image: No Appointment Necessary)
A doctor has issued a stark warning to anyone taking drugs such as statins, ramipril and metformin, as more than 8 million people are currently on five or more medications. Dr Amir Khan revealed that people are ending up in hospital due to being over-medicated with drugs that some have been taking for 30 or more years.
In Ireland, 6 in 10 people aged 65 and older (around 60% to 64.3%) take five or more regular medications (polypharmacy), and 2 in 10 take 10 or more, according to the Irish Health Review Board.
The Irish Health Review Board has said: “As people grow older, they are more likely to live with multiple chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis. As a result these people are prescribed multiple medications by their doctors. In Ireland, for example, 6 in 10 people aged over 65 years are prescribed five or more medications and 2 in 10 are prescribed 10 or more medications.
“While the purpose of these medications is to improve symptoms and the underlying condition, sometimes these medications can have side-effects that can lead to medication-related injury, for example stomach bleeds, problems with the kidneys and falls.”
Dr Khan highlighted that millions of people are taking 10 or more medications, explaining that patients who have been on drugs for high blood pressure, diabetes and cholesterol – such as statins, ramipril and metformin – for many years may find their bodies have changed significantly over time.
He said that millions take five or more medications – and hundreds of thousands take 10 or more and added: “It’s resulting in about a thousand hospital admissions due to side effects of medication. Now we do have a term for this. It’s called polypharmacy. Anyone who’s on five medications or more is called polypharmacy. It’s not automatically a bad thing because lots of people are on medication that are keeping them alive and well.”
Lower your blood pressure in just eight weeks, ‘brake’ to shut down chronic pain found, and trendy keto diet boosts your health – all this and more in our science newsletter He stressed that people should NOT simply stop taking their prescribed medication: “So we don’t want anyone just to stop their medication. And you can see how this can happen. If someone has high blood pressure, diabetes, or has just had a heart attack, they can be quite easily. Just those three things alone can mean you’re on five or more medications and that’s keeping you healthy and living longer as well. The problem we have is that often people start these medications in their 50s and 60s and are still on them in their 80s as well.
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“So the prescription stays the same, but the person has changed over that time. Their kidney function may have changed, their weight may have changed, their liver function. All of these things that drugs rely on to break down and work could have changed resulting in more side effects. And that’s the issue.”
There are occasions where patients visit their doctor because something has occurred and they’re experiencing a problem; however, sometimes this is actually down to side effects from their medication. Dr Khan explained: “So the other thing is older people are more prone to these side effects, they come in and see doctors and they rather than saying this is a side effect of the medication, they treat it as a new illness and get a new tablet for it as well. And they could be under a specialist who gives them another tablet for that.
“Often with medicine, you look at single diseases. You got high blood pressure, let’s treat that. You got another single disease, diabetes, let’s treat that. But we need to look at the people taking these medications as a whole. So the answer here is deprescribing, taking medication off is really important looking at people as a whole rather than individual diseases.
“But I think the key people to do all of this is pharmacists in GP surgeries. We’re getting more and more of them. They are brilliant at looking at which medications need to stay on, which ones can come off. That is the key to deprescribing and managing this issue.”
His comments sparked a reaction from some followers, who cautioned that coming off medication could also pose its own risks. One remarked: “Well, our GP recently took my 83-year-old mum off a heart tablet as she’d been on it twenty years …guess what …she’s now been put on it again as her blood pressure rocketed and her feet swelled up.”
Another chimed in: “People should have regular medication reviews as to whether they need all the meds they’re on and interactions.”
A third follower concurred: “You’re so right, Amir. Very interesting today. This happened with my dad as he got older. The pharmacists are great at what they do.”