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Patients with both cancer and diabetes have a higher overall mortality rate than patients with a cancer diagnosis alone. So researchers wondered whether a cancer diagnosis affects patient’s adherence to glucose-lowering drugs[1]
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They measured the ‘medication possession ratio’ (MPR), by tracking when and how frequently patients refilled their medications, for 3,281 diabetic patients with cancer and 12,891 diabetic patients without cancer. Before a cancer diagnosis, the MPR increased monthly by 0.1% but dropped significantly by 6.3% at diagnosis and continued to fall monthly by 0.2%.
The findings confirm that adherence to glucose-lowering therapies in diabetes patients falls following a cancer diagnosis — but further research is needed to find out why.
References
[1] Zanders MMJ, Haak HR, van Herk-Sukel MPPetal.Impactof canceron adherence to glucose-lowering drug treatment in individuals with diabetes. Diabetologia 2015. doi: 10.1007/s00125-015-3497-8.
