An Evaluation of Medication Adherence to Antidiabetic Drugs: A Prospective Study

Adherence to prescribed medication is an imperative issue which can be directly linked with the management of diabetes mellitus. WHO identifies poor adherence is the most significant cause of uncontrolled blood sugar level. A prospective observational study was conducted in in-patients admitted to general medicine department diagnosed with diabetes mellitus from September 2019 to February 2020. Data was collected from case sheets of patients for age, gender, and socio- economic data. Informed consent was obtained from patients or bystanders before study. Direct interview was conducted with patients using standardized questionnaire known as MMAS-8. Patient’s adherence to medications was assessed using scores obtained from the adherence scale. Among 100 in-patients 62 (62%) patients were male and 38 (38%) patients were female. Most of the patients had low adherence among both genders. Patients under age group of 41-60 years were more (58%) in which 46% had low adherence. It was observed that, married patients were more with low adherence (58%) followed by unmarried. When taking account of education of the patient, graduates and above were only 22 patients (22%) but most of them (16% ) had moderate/high adherence. Education of the patients had a significant positive correlation (i.e., p value = 0.0000002) between low adherence and high adherence of patients. This study showed that the adherence to anti-diabetic medications in diabetic patients were very less. It needs to be continuously evaluated in order to reduce complications and improve quality of life of patients. Keywords: Medication adherence, MMAS-8, Uncontrolled diabetes