With sustained improvement in the field of pharmacology; the number of people taking medications or drugs has improved considerably over the recent years. It is however to be noted that combining two or more drugs can lead to disastrous consequences, including death.

Several medications contain active ingredients that can interact or work against each other. Patients and doctors can rule out the risks by paying close attention to what they are taking.

'Some of these interactions are so dramatic that they can lead to death,' said Ralf Stahlmann of the Charite Clinic in Berlin.

'Approximately one in 300 combined applications of medications lead to a problem,' said Walter Haefeli, a pharmacologist at the University Clinic in Heidelberg.

'Doctors and scientists lost oversight of all the possible drug interactions long ago. When a patient receives 10 drugs from a clinic, the number of drug pairings within that group is numerous,' Haefeli said.

Changes in the dosage could also change the interactions, complicating matters further. In order to grasp all possibilities, an enormous database must be assembled, a task that technicians in Germany are only just beginning.

Patients too must be wary of interactions on their own. For example, taking certain heart medicines with certain laxatives can be problematic, points out Ursula Sellerberg of the Coalition of German Pharmacy Associations.

Antibiotics and antidepressants react equally fast when combined with other medicines. Women taking contraceptives should be careful when they are prescribed an antibiotic, because not all of them mix well and might result in an unwanted pregnancy, Sellerberg added.