Study shows value of adherence to meds after heart attack

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Improved adherence to statins and beta-blockers make for longer survival after a heart attack.
Many clinical trials show that drugs like statins and beta-blockers will improve survival prospects after a heart attack. Now researchers at the University of Toronto produce hard evidence of the value of sticking to your regime of meds. They looked at patients taking one of three groups of meds - statins, beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers. The latter was used as a control, as it has no documented survival benefit, to try to separate out the impact that healthy living has on survival. For patients who adhere to a medication regime after a heart attack are probably also making lifestyle efforts that could contribute to survival.

The patients were divided into high, intermediate and low adherers, depending on how faithfully they followed their medication regime. For statins, mortality was highest among the low adherers at 24 per cent; for intermediate adherers, it was 20 per cent and for low adherers it was 16 per cent. A similar relationship, though less pronounced, was seen for beta-blockers. No relationship between adherence and mortality was seen for calcium-channel blockers. The findings suggest that it is the medication - in the case of statins and beta-blockers - rather than any behavioral attributes of good adherers which contributes to survival benefit after a heart attack.

Source
Journal of the American Medical Association 10th January 2007 Volume 297 pages 177-186

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