A considerable number of people who are prescribed drugs for a newly diagnosed condition such as heart disease, asthma, diabetes, or rheumatoid arthritis, soon stop taking the medicine - often intentionally - a UK study shows.

Many have problems with the drug early on and don’t get help. People “need more support when starting a new medication for a chronic condition and new services may be required to provide this,” Dr. Nick Barber from the University of London and colleagues write in the journal Quality and Safety in Health Care.

The investigators recruited 258 patients from southern England with a newly diagnosed chronic illness. They were able to interview 239 ten days after starting a new prescription medication, and 197 after four weeks.

At ten days, 30 percent of patients were not taking their new medications as prescribed, “almost half of these deliberately so,” the researchers report. At four weeks, 25 percent were non-adherent.

Patients frequently encountered problems with the new medication and many had “substantial unmet needs for information and support,” the authors report.

“We were surprised by the speed with which non-adherence appeared, and the extent to which people had problems with their medicines,” Barber told Reuters Health, adding that this problem has not been previously recognized.

“There is a clear need for supporting patients in this difficult period, and we are now evaluating a service in which a pharmacist rings up to ask the patient how they are doing, and to offer any help, advice or information that the patient may need,” Barber said. It is likely, he added, that the same problems exist outside the UK as well.

SOURCE: Quality and Safety in Health Care, June 2004.