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Study finds retired people less likely to take medications
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Men and women with hypertension and men with diabetes are less likely to take their medications after retirement, according to a study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
"For men and women with hypertension and men with type 2 diabetes, retirement was linked to 1.3- to 2.4-fold increases in poor medication adherence," says Professor Mika Kivimäki, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University College London. "We saw no significant difference in this adherence pattern between age groups, socioeconomic strata or patients with and without depression or comorbid cardiovascular disease. These patterns suggest that our findings were robust and not limited to a specific group."
Researchers from Finland, the United Kingdom and Sweden identified and followed 3,468 adult patients with hypertension and 412 adult patients with type 2 diabetes for medication adherence for the three years before their retirement and the four years after their retirement (mean follow-up 6.8 yr). The primary outcome was proportion of patients with poor adherence to medication, which we defined as less than 40% of days covered by treatment. Researchers said they determined these proportions before and after retirement using data from filled prescriptions.