Use of medicines to prevent disease may not prolong or improve life in elderly people, say doctors.
Drugs such as statins, prescribed to combat heart disease, may simply switch the cause of death to cancer or dementia in older people, they warn.
Writing in the British Medical Journal they said fear of discrimination meant doctors were offering preventive treatment regardless of age.
Experts agreed more evidence on such treatments in the elderly was needed.
Statins are the mainstay of the government’s goal to cut rates of heart disease by 40% by 2010. Click here for full article