Non-adherence to Antihypertensive Treatment

Research published in Hypertension by Gupta et al looked at the reasons of non-adherence to anti-hypertensive treatment.

The researchers used liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry of urine and serum to detect non-adherence and explored its association with the main demographic- and therapy-related factors in 1348 patients with hypertension in the United Kingdom and Czech republic.

The researchers found that non-adherence to the blood pressure medications was inversely related to age and male sex and was as high as 41.6% in the UK and 31.5% in the Czech Republic. Furthermore, with each additional prescription, the rate of non-adherence increased to 85% and 77% in the UK and Czech populations.  The odds of non-adherence to diuretics were the highest among 5 classes of antihypertensive medications in both populations.

High blood pressure is the single most important risk factor for health loss and premature death worldwide.  Although treatment is proven to be effective, target blood pressures are only achieved in 40-50% of patients. This is likely due to a high number of patients taking their medicines incorrectly, or at all.