LAUSR

Background: The lack of adherence to treatment in patients affected by chronic diseases, such as rheumatic diseases, remains a relevant issue. Indeed, “inefficacy” or “intolerance” to therapies prescribed could hide a scarce compliance of a considerable percentage of patients. Objectives: We aimed to evaluate the adherence to treatment in a series of patients affected by chronic inflammatory arthropathies treated with biologic agents. Methods: We recruited 175 consecutive patients (M/F: 56/120; mean age 52.6±12.3 years) affected by rheumatoid arthritis (98), psoriatic arthropathy (45) or ankylosing spondylitis (32) treated with subcutaneous biologic agents. All patients completed the Morisky Medication Adherence Scales (MMAS-8)1, in order to estimate their adherence to therapy. Moreover, we achieved from all cases the Patient Global Assessment (PGA), the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) for articular pain, the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ), and the report of eventual adverse events. Results: Considering MMAS-8, 23/175 (13.1%) patients were low adherent to treatment (score <6), and 59/175 (33.7%) presented medium-grade adherence (score 6-7). Adherence to treatments tended to be higher in males (mean MMAS-8 7.3±1.1 vs. 6.9±1.6; p=0.073), while it was not associated with age, education level, type of articular disease, presence of adverse events, or treatment with the type of traditional or biologic DMARDs. Higher mean levels of PGA (51.3 vs. 38.8; p=0.012), VAS (52.6 vs. 44.3; p=0.08), and HAQ (0.9 vs. 0.5; p=0.001) was reported in low-adherent patients compared with full adherent subjects. Conclusion: Our study confirmed that the percentage of patients showing low adherence to therapy is relevant. Moreover, the association of lower adherence to treatments with higher values of the subjective clinimetric indexes suggests to pay attention to the apparent ineffectiveness or loss of efficacy of therapy. References: [1]Morisky DE et al. J Clin Hypertens 2008; 10:348–354. Disclosure of Interests: None declared