CLINICAL PHARMACOLOGICAL ASSESSMENT OF PATIENT KNOWLEDGE, DRUG ADHERENCE AND TREATMENT OUTCOMES AMONG ARTHRITIS PATIENTS IN NAJIBABAD, UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA

ABSTRACTArthritis is a chronic musculoskeletal disease that frequently needs long-term pharmacotherapy.Patient’s knowledge of the disease, prescribed medications and self-management strategies maybe associated with medication adherence. These factors are important to understand so as toidentify knowledge gaps and improve patient education and pharmaceutical care.The present study was designed to assess the patient knowledge and drug adherence and to studytheir association in patients of arthritis in Najibabad, Uttar Pradesh, India. The study summaryincluded 110 patients with arthritis. Patient knowledge was evaluated in the domains of diseaseknowledge, medication knowledge, self-management and lifestyle modification. We also reporteddemographic characteristics, patterns of medication adherence, and sources of healthinformation. Mean patient knowledge score was 117.8 ± 22.4 out of 200. The participants reported excellentknowledge (10.9%), poor knowledge (14.5%), good knowledge (30.9%), and fair knowledge(43.6%). Medication knowledge was 55.1% of the maximum possible domain score and lifestylemodification knowledge was 66.7%. Seventy percent of participants indicated that their most common source of arthritis-related information was healthcare providers. The analysis presented in the report found a positive relationship between patient knowledge and drugadherence (Pearson’s r = 0.842, p < 0.001) but this statistic needs to be verified against the original dataset before publication.The findings suggest that there may be gaps in arthritis-related knowledge among patients, and that patient knowledge may be associated with medication adherence. These knowledge gaps can be overcome by patient education and appropriate pharmaceutical counseling. However, the relationship should be cautiously interpreted and the clinical treatment results could not be assessed due to the lack of the corresponding data.