Pharmacologic approaches to musculoskeletal disorders.

Pharmacologic considerations of musculoskeletal disease in the elderly involve an appreciation of the pathophysiology of aging as it alters host response to the particular drugs used for these disorders. Treatment of rheumatic conditions is often chronic. Pharmacologic studies of drug handling in the elderly versus the young are often short term and not appropriate to the answers required for sustained therapy in aging individuals with decremental organ system decline, dysfunction, and disease. Where inadequate information exists, the clinical therapist must proceed cautiously on a highly individualized basis in choice of agents, use of those agents at whatever particular dose, and monitoring to ensure safety. Such commitment requires the best of the art as well as the science of medicine. No less is required in the appropriate therapy of these disorders in our elderly population.