A Systematic Review of Adherence With Medications for Diabetes
Response to Cramer
- Johan Wens, MD1,
- Etienne Vermeire, MD1,
- Paul Van Royen, MD, PHD1 and
- Hilary Hearnshaw, MSC, PHD2
- 1Department of Family Practice, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
- 2Centre for Primary Health Care Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry, U.K
- Address correspondence to Dr. Johan Wens, MD, University of Antwerp, Faculty of Medicine, Department of Family Practice, Universiteitsplein 1, 2610 Wilrijk, Belgium. E-mail: johan.wens{at}ua.ac.be
The recent article by Cramer (1) aroused our full interest. The author reports a systematic literature search performed to identify articles with quantitative data on adherence to oral hypoglycemic agents and insulin and correlations between adherence rates and glycemic control. Abstracts identified by searching Medline, Current Contents, Health & Psychological Instruments, and Cochrane Collaborative databases were screened. The systematic search resulted in 20 publications, i.e., 15 retrospective and 5 prospective studies, with adequate data for synthesis. We would like to suggest that from our experience, the Embase database would have probably added relevant, high-quality articles that do not appear …
