Credit: Original article published here.
In a recent study, researchers evaluated treatment adherence in patients with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) based on age and either once-daily or twice-daily dosing of medication. They generally sought to determine if prescribing once-daily dosing improved the suboptimal treatment adherence seen in this population.
The study’s lead author, Heather De Keyser, MD, MSCS, reported that patients with asthma and COPD with once-daily medications had significantly improve daily treatment adherence compared with patients prescribed twice-daily medications.
Researchers also found patients with COPD showed higher adherence than patients with asthma, which they noted may be due to an older cohort age. Findings from the study were presented in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.
Treatment Adherence Improved With Once-Daily Medication
The study assessed data from electronic medication monitors on date and time of inhaler actuations over 90 days among patients from the Propeller Health platform. Researchers compared adherence between once- and twice-daily schedules using retrospective regression models adjusted for age.
According to the report, patients with once-daily schedules had a median daily adherence of 63.3% (interquartile range [IQR], 31.1-86.7) for asthma and 83.3% (IQR, 57.2-95.6) COPD, which was significantly higher than patients with twice-daily schedules at 50.3% (IQR, 21.1-78.3) for asthma (P<.001) and 64.7% (IQR, 32.8-88.9) for COPD (P<.001). Authors noted this association was found in all age groups except in patients with asthma 4 to 17 years old.
Additionally, the once-daily medication group had a significantly higher proportion of patients with ≥80% adherence compared with the twice-daily group for both asthma (34.3% vs 23.6%; P<.001) and COPD (54.8% vs 38.6%; P<.001). Adherence was lowest overall in patients aged 18-29 years.
Ultimately, Dr. De Keyser and colleagues suggested patients with once-daily dosing schedule medications were more like to adhere to treatment than patients with twice-daily medications. They added that, “the effect of greater adherence on exacerbations is a topic for future analysis.”
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