Background/rationale: Adherence to cholinesterase inhibitor (ChEI) is associated with treatment effectiveness in the treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). We investigated the clinical adherence to donepezil in Taiwan.
Methods: This was a retrospective study. Patients treated with donepezil were recruited from Kaohsiung Medical University Hospital and Kaohsiung Municipal Ta-Tung Hospital from February 2004 to April 2013. We analyzed their treatment duration in months.
Results: A total of 273 patients were included in our analysis. Sixty-seven patients withdrew from donepezil treatment with mean treatment duration of 28.0 ± 25.9 months. Better initial scores on the Mini-Mental Status Examination (P = .007), Cognitive Abilities Screening Instrument (P = .003), and the Clinical Dementia Rating Scale (CDR) Sum of Boxes (P = .011) were positively associated with clinical adherence. The clinical adherent rate was higher in the CDR-0.5 group than in the CDR-2.0 group with significant difference.
Conclusion: Although there are some limitations in our study, these findings indicate that early intervention with ChEI in patients with AD should be emphasized and may lead to a better clinical adherence.
Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; National Health Insurance; adherence; donepezil.
© The Author(s) 2014.