Participation in nationwide program improved adherence to schizophrenia drug

Data from an observational study by Janssen Pharmaceuticals demonstrate patients with schizophrenia who received their long-acting injectable treatment at a Janssen Connect injection center had improved medication adherence.

Janssen Connect offers information and assistance to patients with schizophrenia nationwide in an effort to help them remain on their prescribed long-acting injectable atypical antipsychotic.

According to a company press release, patients who received injections at Janssen Connect centers, which are typically in pharmacies, for at least 6 months were 4.5 times more likely to be adherent to treatment than those in the study who did not choose to visit the injection centers. The study included 9,354 people with schizophrenia who enrolled between December 2010 and October 2013. Patients were prescribed paliperidone palmitate extended-release injectable suspension (Invega Sustenna, Janssen) and were considered to be adherent if they were under treatment with medication at least 80% of the time.

In the press release, the authors noted limitations of the study, which was not designed to measure outcomes, and said the results may be confounded by “real-world” factors which may not be attributable to the use of injection centers, and may be subject to coding errors or other administrative errors.

The results were presented in a poster session at the 27th Annual US Psychiatric and Mental Health Congress Conference and Exhibition in Orlando.