medwireNews: Adherence to lipid-lowering drugs is crucial for reducing cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk among patients with type 2 diabetes, but taking only some of the prescribed medication is better than none at all, study results suggest.
As presented by Sofia Karlsson (University of Gothenburg, Sweden) at the EASD annual meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, the researchers used data from the Swedish Prescribed Drug Register to categorize 86,568 participants into five different levels of treatment adherence. This was based on the medication possession ratio (MPR), calculated from the number of days with medication available relative to the total number of days.
Compared with participants in the highest adherence category (MPR>80), patients with the lowest adherence (MPR≤20) were more than twice as likely to experience a primary CVD event, and those with intermediate levels of adherence (MPR 41–60) had an approximately 1.5-fold increased risk.
Similarly, in the secondary prevention analysis, patients with the lowest adherence to lipid-lowering therapy had the highest risk for CVD events, with those in the intermediate categories having a reduced risk, and the lowest risk seen among participants with the highest level of adherence.
“This tells us that patients should aim for as high adherence as possible, but taking tablets every other day is better than not at all,” said Karlsson.
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