Adolescents who misuse controlled medications (e.g., pain, stimulant, sleeping and antianxiety medications) for which they have a legitimate prescription may be more likely to abuse other substances and to sell, give or trade their controlled medications to other individuals, according to a report in the August issue of Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, one […]
Clinicians have tried a variety of ways to encourage people to take prescribed medicines, but a new research review says it is still unclear whether many of these interventions have been effective. Many programs to encourage proper medicine use — from counseling to programs that help patients use their own medicines in the hospital to […]
The results of a unique study from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, show that personality has an impact on how likely people are to take their medication. This is the first major study of its kind to be published in the online open access journal PloS ONE. Check the end of this report for a […]
Epilepsy is a disorder of recurrent unprovoked seizures that affects 325,000 children younger than 15 years in the United States. An examination of medication adherence among children with newly diagnosed epilepsy found that nearly 60 percent showed persistent nonadherence during the first 6 months of therapy, and that lower socioeconomic status was associated with higher […]
Elderly persons often have several diseases and use many drugs; they are also more sensitive to drugs compared to younger persons. Use of more drugs than necessary tends to occur among the elderly, however, underuse of drugs and use of inappropriate types of drugs also occur. Psychotropic drugs, such as hypnotics, anxiolytics, and antidepressant drugs, […]
Approximately five percent of prescriptions submitted by CVS Caremark Pharmacy Benefit Management (PBM) members in a 30-day period during 2009 included a “dispense as written” (DAW) designation. This practice – whereby doctors or patients demand the dispensing of a specific brand-name drug and not a generic alternative – costs the health care system up to […]
Few primary care physicians pay adequate attention to patients taking prescription opioid drugs despite the potential for abuse, addiction, and overdose, according to a new study by researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University. The study was published in the March 2 online edition of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
A high proportion of patients with high blood pressure are failing to take their medication properly and would benefit clinically from a course of ‘adherence therapy,’ according to new research from the University of East Anglia (UEA). High blood pressure – or hypertension – is one of the major cardiovascular diseases worldwide. It leads to […]
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