Acne

Acne patients: 'substantial proportion' fails to collect prescribed treatment

Followed up by the researchers from the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, the patients were called to ask about "primary adherence" to treatments - that is, about whether they collected their pharmacy treatments in the first place, or used them at all when they did.

The questions were aside from whether the meds would be used as directed - the survey did not

ask about what researchers call secondary

adherence.

Overall, 27% answered that they had not filled a prescription - effectively leaving just over a quarter of acne treatments on the pharmacy shelf.

The finding surprised the Wake Forest Baptist, Winston-Salem, NC, researchers - they cite previous research that suggests this type of no adherence to acne treatment runs at around 10%

Primary adherence, however, had not been well-described by previous medical research, and the authors add: "Many other studies have focused on the adherence frequency and increased secondary adherence in patients with acne."

Other findings in the study were that:

 Being prescribed one treatment for acne held the best chance of the patient collecting or using it, giving the lowest failure rate of 9%

 Those who were prescribed two medications had the highest rate of primary non adherence at 40%

 Treatment recommendations numbering three or more products resulted in a failure rate of 31%.

While the authors did not design their research to find out the reasons why patients fail to get their prescriptions, they did hear "unprompted explanations" from the participants in the study. Reasons for non-adherence mentioned during the phone surveys included:

Learn more about cystic acne

 Cost

 Forget fulness

 Having similar medication already on hand

 Not agreeing with the prescribed treatment

 Improvement in their skin condition.

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