Hypertensive Lombards, committed to fighting stomach pain and with fragile bones. And then, standing in line at the pharmacy counter to pick up pills or drops, juggling an ever-growing list of prescriptions from your doctor.
In the ranking of the ten most prescribed active ingredients in the region (as a percentage of the total packs distributed in 2022. The complete ranking is at the bottom of the article), the podium is occupied by bisoprolol fumarate, pantoprazole sodium sesquihydrate and colecalciferol.
Complex names for commonly used drugs, useful for combating, in order, heart failure and hypertension, gastroesophageal reflux and vitamin D deficiency.
The ranking emerges from the data collected by Federfarma, the national federation of Italian pharmacy owners, on pharmaceutical expenditure affiliated with the national health system. Among the first ten medicines indicated in the prescriptions we find other “allies” in the fight against hypertension, such as ramipril and amlodipine besilate, some drugs to keep diabetes at bay (metformin hydrochloride), a diuretic linked to the treatment of heart failure . Acetylsalicylic acid, or aspirin, occupies only the seventh position and is followed by atorvastatin, well known by those who risk seeing their cholesterol skyrocket to worrying levels.
Looking instead at the data from an economic point of view, the diseases that have the greatest impact on public coffers are those of the gastrointestinal system and metabolism (25.81% of total expenditure), those of the cardiovascular system (25.74%) and the nervous (15.38%).
The analysis also captures the trend in the number of prescriptions passing through the hands of pharmacists, which has increased since 2018, with a single moment of decline corresponding to the explosion of the pandemic in 2020. Last year, prescriptions reached 82.7 million, for a gross expenditure of 1.8 billion euros.
Do the ailments and treatments of the Lombards resemble those of other Italians? If the protagonists of the top ten active ingredients are largely similar, there are significant differences in the order. Aspirin, for example, in Southern Italy and in the Islands occupies the very first places in the classification. The report does not explain the reasons for the difference: greater use or just more frequent prescriptions, while Lombards tend to decide when to take the pill without consulting a doctor?
Absent, between the Alps and the Po, is levothyroxine sodium, which is instead well positioned at a national level. Thyroid dysfunction therapy takes a back seat to other remedies. In Italy, the document recalls, prescription drugs represent 55% of the turnover of pharmacies. This sector in 2022 reached a value of 14 billion, an increase of 2.2% on the previous year.