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Brief Report: Apparent Antiretroviral Overadherence by Pill Count is Associated With HIV Treatment Failure in Adolescents.

ABSTRACT: Pill counts with calculated adherence percentages are used in many settings to monitor adherence, but can be undermined by patients discarding pills to hide nonadherence. Pill counts suggesting that >100% of prescribed doses were taken can signal "pill dumping." We defined "overadherence" among a cohort of 300 HIV-infected adolescents as having greater than one-third of pill counts with >100% adherence during a year of follow-up. Apparent overadherence was more common in those with virologic failure than in those with suppressed viral loads (33% vs 13%, ?(2) P = 0.001). Pill count adherence repeatedly >100% may identify HIV-infected adolescents at increased risk of treatment failure.

SUBMITTER: Okatch H

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4942380 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Brief Report: Apparent Antiretroviral Overadherence by Pill Count is Associated With HIV Treatment Failure in Adolescents.

Okatch Harriet H Beiter Kaylin K Eby Jessica J Chapman Jennifer J Marukutira Tafireyi T Tshume Ontibile O Matshaba Mogomotsi M Anabwani Gabriel M GM Gross Robert R Lowenthal Elizabeth E

Journal of acquired immune deficiency syndromes (1999) 20160801 5

Pill counts with calculated adherence percentages are used in many settings to monitor adherence, but can be undermined by patients discarding pills to hide nonadherence. Pill counts suggesting that >100% of prescribed doses were taken can signal "pill dumping." We defined "overadherence" among a cohort of 300 HIV-infected adolescents as having greater than one-third of pill counts with >100% adherence during a year of follow-up. Apparent overadherence was more common in those with virologic fai ...[more]

PMID: 26990822

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Project description:Pills (tablets and capsules) are widely used to administer prescription drugs or to take supplements such as vitamins. Unfortunately, little is known about how much effort it takes Americans to swallow these various pills. More specifically, it is not known to what extent hard-to-swallow pills might affect treatment outcomes (eg, interfering with adherence to prescribed medications or causing clinical complications). It is also unclear which properties (eg, size, shape, or surface texture) Americans prefer or reject for their pills. To learn more about these issues, we interviewed a small group of individuals.We invited individuals in waiting rooms of our tertiary health care center to participate in structured interviews about their pill-taking habits and any problems they have swallowing pills. We inquired which pill properties they believed caused swallowing problems. Participants scored capsules and pills of representative size, shape, and texture for swallowing effort and reported their personal preferences.Of 100 successive individuals, 99 participants completed the interview (65% women, mean age = 41 years, range = 23-77 years). Eighty-three percent took pills daily (mean 4 pills/d; 56% of those pills were prescribed by providers). Fifty-four percent of participants replied yes to the question, "Did you ever have to swallow a solid medication that was too difficult?" Four percent recounted serious complications: 1% pill esophagitis, 1% pill impaction, and 2% stopped treatments (antibiotic and prenatal supplement) because they could not swallow the prescribed pills. Half of all participants routinely resorted to special techniques (eg, plenty of liquids or repeated or forceful swallows). Sixty-one percent of those having difficulties cited specific pill properties: 27% blamed size (20% of problems were caused by pills that were too large whereas 7% complained about pills that were too small to sense); 12% faulted rough surface texture; others cited sharp edges, odd shapes, or bad taste/smell. Extra-large pills were widely loathed, with 4 out of 5 participants preferring to take 3 or more medium-sized pills instead of a single jumbo pill.Our survey results suggest that 4 out of 5 adult Americans take several pills daily, and do so without undue effort. It also suggests that half of today's Americans encounter pills that are hard to swallow. Up to 4% of our participants gave up on treatments because they could not swallow the prescribed pills. Up to 7% categorically rejected taking pills that are hard to swallow. Specific material properties are widely blamed for making pills hard to swallow; extra-large capsules and tablets are universally feared, whereas medium-sized pills with a smooth coating are widely preferred. Our findings suggest that health care providers could minimize treatment failures and complications by prescribing and dispensing pills that are easy to swallow. Industry and regulatory bodies may facilitate this by making swallowability an essential criterion in the design and licensing of oral medications. Such policies could lessen the burden of pill taking for Americans and improve the adherence with prescribed treatments.

Dataset Information

Brief Report: Apparent Antiretroviral Overadherence by Pill Count is Associated With HIV Treatment Failure in Adolescents.

Publications

Brief Report: Apparent Antiretroviral Overadherence by Pill Count is Associated With HIV Treatment Failure in Adolescents.

Similar Datasets

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