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Agreement between Rheumatologist and Patient-reported Adherence to Methotrexate in a US Rheumatoid Arthritis Registry
Jeffrey R Curtis1, Aseem Bharat2, Lang Chen2
1From the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama; Consortium of Rheumatology Researchers of North America (CORRONA) LLC, Southborough; University of Massachusetts, Worcester, Massachusetts, USA.J.R. Curtis, MD, MS, MPH, University of Alabama at Birmingham; A. Bharat, MD, MPH, University of Alabama at Birmingham; L. Chen, PhD, University of Alabama at Birmingham; J.D. Greenberg, MD, MPH, CORRONA LLC; L. Harrold, MD, MPH, University of Massachusetts; J.M. Kremer, MD, CORRONA LLC; T. Sommers, MS, CORRONA LLC; D. Pappas, MD, MPH, CORRONA LLC. jrcurtis@uabmc.edu.
Objective:
Rheumatologists have limited tools to assess medication adherence. The extent to which methotrexate (MTX) adherence is overestimated by rheumatologists is unknown.
Methods:
We deployed an Internet survey to patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) participating in a US registry. Patient self-report was the gold standard compared to MTX recorded in the registry.
Results:
Response rate to the survey was 44%. Of 228 patients whose rheumatologist reported current MTX at the time of the most recent registry visit, 45 (19.7%) had discontinued (n = 19, 8.3%) or missed ≥ 1 dose in the last month (n = 26, 11.4%). For the subgroup whose rheumatologist also confirmed at the next visit that they were still taking MTX (n = 149), only 2.6% reported not taking it, and 10.7% had missed at least 1 dose.
Conclusion:
MTX use was misclassified for 13%-20% of patients, mainly because of 1 or more missed doses rather than overt discontinuation. Clinicians should be aware of suboptimal adherence when assessing MTX response.
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