Factors associated with adherence to anti- XXXX treatment in Pakistan.

@entity1 @entity308 @entity101 @entity9360 @entity65
OBJECTIVES: Poor adherence is one of the biggest obstacles in therapeutic control of @entity101 . The objectives of this study were (i) to measure adherence to antihypertensive therapy in a representative sample of the @entity101 Pakistani population and (ii) to investigate the factors associated with adherence in the studied population. METHODS AND RESULTS: A cross-sectional study was conducted on a simple random sample of 460 @entity1 at the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) and National Institute of @entity65 , Karachi, from September 2005-May 2006. Adherence was assessed using the Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS), with scores ranging from 0 (non-adherent) to 4 (adherent). In addition to MMAS, @entity1 self-reports about the number of pills taken over a prescribed period were used to estimate adherence as a percentage. @entity9360 Anxiety and @entity308 Scale ( @entity9360 -ADS) was incorporated to find any association between @entity308 and adherence. At a cut-off value of 80%, 77% of the cases were adherent. Upon univariate analyses, increasing age, better awareness and increasing number of pills prescribed significantly improved adherence, while @entity308 showed no association. Significant associations, upon multivariate analyses, included number of drugs that a @entity1 was taking (P<0.02) and whether he/she was taking medication regularly or only for symptomatic relief (P<0.00001). CONCLUSIONS: Similar to what has been reported worldwide, younger age, poor awareness, and symptomatic treatment adversely affected adherence to antihypertensive medication in our population. In contrast, monotherapy reduced adherence, whereas psychosocial factors such as @entity308 showed no association. These findings may be used to identify the subset of population at risk of low adherence who should be targeted for interventions to achieve better blood pressure control and hence prevent complications.
