Background/Purpose:
Symptom-control with reduction of mortality and morbidityare the main treatment goalsin Behcet’s Disease (BD). However, similar to other chronic disorders, increased unnecessary visits, hospitalisation and medication costs are thought to originate from lack of adherence to medications of the treatment protocols in BD. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate self-reported medication adherence in BD patients.
Methods:
The study group was composed of 118BD patients(F/M:62/56, mean age:37.7±10.8 years) and disease control groups regarding 50 patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA, F/M:37/13, mean age:39.9±10.4 years) and 58 patients with Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF, F/M:39/19, mean age:34.4±11.9 years).
Medication adherence was evaluated by the Morisky scale that is a brief 4-item structured questionnaire. Each patient has a scale score ranging from “0” to “4” with low scores indicating better adherence.Trained interviewers (n=4) who were not involved in any disease assessment or treatmenthelped to individuals with visual impairment or illiterates in filling the questionnaire.
Results:
The Moriskyscale score was similar in BD (2.05±0.99) and FMF (2.01±1.1) (p=0.99), whereas it was significantly lower in RA (1.54±1.05) than BD (p=0.021).In BD, no significant difference was present in the Morisky scale score according to gender (females:2.09±0.9vsmales:2.0±1.02, p=0.60).The score of patients with major organ involvement (2.1±1.1) was also similar to mucocutaneous ones (1.9±0.9) (p=0.57) in males. In contrast, the score was lower in patients with major organ involvement (1.7±1.1) compared to patients with mucocutaneous involvement (2.29±0.8) in female BD patients (p=0.04). Moreover, a weak correlation was observed between the Morisky scale score and the number of medication (4.8±2.4, r:0.3 p=0.029).
Conclusion:
Self-reported medication adherence was found to be low in BD patients. Medication adherence seems to be different according to gender in the frame of major organ involvement, suggesting that either the perception or consequences of disease-associated morbidity is associated to gender-related features in BD.
Disclosure:
G. Mumcu,
None;
A. Taze,
None;
E. Kula,
None;
S. Yemez,
None;
S. Eksi,
None;
L. Köksal,
None;
F. Alibaz-Oner,
None;
S. Yilmaz Oner,
None;
P. Atagündüz,
None;
N. Inanc,
None;
T. Ergun,
None;
H. Direskeneli,
None.
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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/low-medication-adherence-is-observed-in-behcets-disease/