Table 3. Drug Alerts in the Elderly.

	Number of medications taken
	5	6	7	8	9	10
Number of subjects (% of elderly) a	172 (11.0)	114 (8.0)	100 (5.9)	70 (4.6)	50 (2.9)	39 (2.6)
Total alerts/person	3.3	5.1	6.5	8.9	10.7	13.7
Major alerts/person	0.3	0.5	0.5	0.6	1.2	1.6
Moderate alerts/person	2.4	3.8	5.0	6.9	7.9	9.9
Minor alerts/person	0.6	0.9	1.0	1.4	1.6	2.1

Number and type of drugs.com alerts for 2009–2010 NHANES subjects ≥65 years old taking five or more medications simultaneously.

^a the percentage of elderly taking this number of drugs estimated using the survey weights