Patient Preference and Adherence (Apr 2024)
Improving Medication Adherence Levels in Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) Patients: A Narrative Evidence-Based Review
Abstract
Obreniokibo Ibifubara Amiesimaka,1 Kristina Aluzaite,1 Rhiannon Braund,2 Michael Schultz1,3 1Gastroenterology Research Unit, Department of Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand; 2New Zealand Pharmacovigilance Centre, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand; 3Gastroenterology Unit, Dunedin Hospital, Te Whatu Ora/Health New Zealand, Dunedin, New ZealandCorrespondence: Michael Schultz, Gastroenterology Research Unit, Department of Medicine, Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago, PO Box 913, Dunedin, 9054, New Zealand, Tel +64 3 479 0999, Email [email protected]: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) management is typified by a long-term medication regimen which can comprise multiple medications prescribed in different combinations, doses, frequencies, and with various administration routes. This complexity can make medication adherence (MA) – patients taking their medications per the prescription – for patients with IBD a challenge. The research corpus contains diverse interventions aimed at improving MA in patients with IBD. Therefore, to condense the evidenced strategies for ease of reference, this narrative evidence-based review broadly outlines the patient-level interventions reported. The interventions are grouped as educational, behavioural, cognitive-behavioural, and multicomponent. They, however, present mixed results as to their efficacy at improving MA, with those employing combined approaches being the most promising. This reflects the reality that MA is impacted by multiple factors encompassing those pertaining to the patient, disease, therapy, patients’ socioeconomic status, and health system. Hence, the most ideal interventions would likely be multifaceted patient-level interventions alongside policy/system-level strategies, to maximise the potential for successfully improving patients’ MA. These findings might have been impacted by the heterogeneity of the studies in terms of the method of MA assessment, duration of interventions, and more besides.Keywords: Inflammatory Bowel Disease, IBD, interventions, medication adherence
