Adherence to prescribed medications of Iranian traditional medicine in a group of patients with chronic disease

The extent to which a person’s health‑related behavior corresponds with medical instructions (adherence) is an important modifier of health system effectiveness. This study was designed to determine the patients’ adherence to Iranian traditional medicine in a group of patients with chronic disease.

Convenience sampling was used to enroll 320 patients with chronic diseases from January 2014 to January 2015 in clinics of traditional medicine affiliated with medical universities in Tehran. Morisky Medication Adherence Scale (MMAS) was used to measure the adherence. After describing the variables and the frequency of adherence, logistic regression analysis was used to determine the influencing factors.

Mean age was 40.8 (standard deviation [SD] =13) years. The mean of the duration of disease was 54.6 (SD = 56.1) months and mean of the duration of referring to the clinics 6.5 (SD = 6.9) months. Total score of MMAS was zero in 33 (10.3%) of patients (high adherence), one or two in 128 (40%) of patients (moderate adherence), and more than two in 159 (49.7%) of patients (low adherence). Forgetfulness, bad taste, not availability, and the high cost of the drugs were the most commonly reported causes of non‑adherence. Adherence was associated with age(odds ratio[OR] =1.05, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 1–1.1), marriage (OR = 10.8, 95% CI 2.05–57.6), number of prescribed drugs (OR = 0.05, 95% CI 0.02–0.14), and duration of disease (OR = 1.01, 95% CI 1–1.02).

Considering the low adherence in users of medications of Iranian traditional medicine, health care practitioners need to be trained in adherence and the influencing factors and also to use some interventions to increase the adherence.