Time Windows Used When Identifying Current Drug Use and Polypharmacy
Sabrina Giometto, Mette Reilev, Martin Thomsen Ernst, Henrik Støvring, Anton Pottegård · 2026
Read Time Windows Used When Identifying Current Drug Use and Polypharmacy by Sabrina Giometto, Mette Reilev, Martin Thomsen Ernst, Henrik Støvring, Anton Pottegård (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13156664.txt.
Description
Sabrina Giometto and co-authors study how the look-back window chosen in drug registry research changes who counts as a current user, in a paper from 2026. Studies of drug use and of polypharmacy, taking many drugs at once, must draw a line in time. No agreement exists on where that line should sit.
Using Danish registries, the team varied the window and watched the exposure counts move. For daily long-term drugs, counts leveled off after about four to five months of look-back. For pain opioids the plateau came later, and for anti-inflammatory drugs it never came. In older adults, polypharmacy rates also swung with the definition used. Simulations tested how well each rule predicts true multi-drug use. The authors urge care, since the window alone can move a study's headline numbers.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Sabrina Giometto, Mette Reilev, Martin Thomsen Ernst, Henrik Støvring, Anton Pottegård |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 18 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |