Nonadherence to Medication in Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Rate and Reasons

BACKGROUND This study is the first study to evaluate the nonadherence rate and reasons of same patient with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in Iran. METHODS During 9 months, 500 patients with IBD were enrolled in the study. Patients were interviewed about their nonadherence behaviors. Factor analysis was used to analyze the collected answers. RESULTS The overall rate of nonadherence was 33.3% (27.6% intentional nonadherence and 5.7% unintentional nonadherence). 33.6% of the patients had at least one relapse after discontinuing treatment. The most frequent reason for intentional nonadherence was discontinuing the treatment after recovering from symptoms (42.7%). The most frequent reason for unintentional nonadherence was forgetfulness (5.2%). 19.8% of the patients did not visit their gastroenterologist on time and they purchased drugs from the drugstore. These patients reported that their clinics were too far and difficult to access. There was no significant relationship between nonadherence and demographic variables. CONCLUSION Multiple reasons are suggested as factors of medication nonadherence and they seem to be different among different populations. Determining these possible reasons, could lead to finding suitable strategies to overcome or reduce them.