ArticlesReporting of Adherence to Medication in Recent Randomized Controlled Trials of 6 Chronic Diseases: A Systematic Literature Review
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
A systematic review of recent randomized controlled trials was performed. Publications of 6 major chronic diseases were included: HIV infection, asthma, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and osteoporosis. These diseases offer a range of different situations and potentially different methodological difficulties for assessing adherence, since some are asymptomatic and some require polymedication.
1. Selected Publications
Of the 637 publications identified, 192 were included in the analysis (Figure 1). The 445 publications excluded were mainly not randomized controlled trials (n = 91), not assessing a pharmacological therapeutic intervention (n = 131), or not about the selected diseases (n = 72).
The characteristics of the publications are given in Table 1. Publications described mainly trials in HIV infection (n = 71, 37%) and diabetes mellitus (n = 48, 25%). Thirty percent of the reports were published in general medical
Discussion
This study assessed the methodological variability in the field of medication adherence in reports of randomized controlled trials of self-administered pharmacological interventions for 6 chronic diseases published over 2 years in high-impact general medical and specialty journals. To our knowledge, this is the first description of methods used to assess adherence in a diverse sample of trials in different chronic conditions. It provides an unprecedented look into the assessment and reporting
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Cited by (0)
This work was supported by grants from the Fonds d’Etude et de Recherche des Médecins de l’Assistance Publique des Hôpitaux de Paris (AP-HP) and from the Association de Recherche Clinique en Rhumatologie (ARCR, Pr Dougados, Cochin) Paris, France.