Pill Counting in the Determination of Factors Affecting Medication Adherence in Patients with Type 2 Diabetes: A Retrospective Observational Study.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Shiomi, Megumi Kurobuchi, Momoka Tanaka, Yoichi Takada, Tesshu Otori, Katsuya
Abstract	IntroductionFor medication adherence, pill counting has higher accuracy in objective assessment. However, previous reports have shown that factors such as psychological bias and other people’s involvement in managing and helping patients take their medications may influence the outcomes. In Japan, all prescription medicines of patients are checked by medical reconciliation, and a pill count is performed during hospitalization. This study investigated factors affecting the medication adherence of patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), including patient- and medication-related factors, by pill counting using medical reconciliation in a situation where the patient’s psychological bias is low.MethodsThis study included 103 patients with T2DM who had been treated with oral hypoglycemic agents (OHAs) for at least 24 weeks. Patients whose OHAs were managed by another person were excluded. We calculated medication adherence values (MAVs) according to the following formula: MAV = (total prescription days − prescription days of OHAs brought when admitted)/(days from the start of OHAs to hospitalization). The relationship between MAVs and patient- and medication-related factors was analyzed.ResultsOn multiple linear regression analysis of patient-related factors with P < 0.10 in the univariate analysis as explanatory variables, a lower number of chronic diseases (β = 0.017; P < 0.001) and higher number of OHAs (β = − 0.021; P = 0.04) were independent factors for lower MAV. Medication-related factors were not found to be independent factors.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that poor adherence was independently associated with lower number of chronic diseases and higher number of OHAs in patients with T2DM.
ISSN	18696953
Journal	Diabetes Therapy
Volume Number	12
PubMed Central reference number	PMC8266921
Issue Number	7
PubMed reference number	34120302
e-ISSN	18696961
DOI	10.1007/s13300-021-01091-1
Language	English
Publisher	Springer Healthcare
Publisher Date	2021-06-13
Publisher Place	Cheshire
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2021
Subject Keyword	Low physical bias Medical reconciliation Medication adherence value Medication adherence Pill count Self-adherence of patients Type 2 diabetes mellitus
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism Internal Medicine