BACKGROUND: Listing tools were found to ameliorate drug treatment in older people; the FORTA (Fit-fOR-The-Aged) list is a clinically validated positive-negative list of medication appropriateness. Here, we retrospectively analyze longitudinal correlations between the FORTA score and key measures of physical and cognitive function in older people. METHODS: 504 participants of a multi-center cohort study (AgeCoDe/AgeQualiDe) for whom the FORTA score (sum of over- and under-treatment errors) had been assessed were studied at three follow-up (FU) time points (FU 6-8; mean age range 87. 9-89. 7 years) ; comparisons between data at these FUs separated by 10 months were available for 292-328 patients. RESULTS: The univariate analysis of the association between FORTADelta₇6 (change of FORTA score between FU 6 and 7) and ADL (Activities of Daily Living) Delta₇6 (- 0. 155, p < 0. 01) and between FORTADelta₇6 and MMSE (Mini-Mental State Examination) Delta₇6 (- 0. 203, p < 0. 01) revealed significant correlations. Multivariable analysis (using a forward selection model, p < 0. 05) revealed a significant association between FORTADelta₇6 and MMSEDelta₇6 (p < 0. 05). Univariate analyses for other comparisons were only significant for FORTADelta₈6 and MMSEDelta₈6. CONCLUSION: This study indicates that longitudinal non-interventional changes of the FORTA score as an integral index of medication appropriateness are associated with changes in ADL and MMSE: the lower this score the better the functional outcome. These findings are in line with earlier interventional data and underscore the potential of FORTA to improve clinical endpoints in older people.
Pazan et al. (Sat,) studied this question.