Impact of gender on adherence to therapy

Abstract

Non-adherence to prescribed medications has been the focus of much interest in the literature owing to the poor treatment outcomes and increased healthcare burden which ensue as a consequence. In order to develop targeted interventions to address treatment non-adherence, it is necessary to first understand the factors which may influence patients’ medication taking behaviour. It has been suggested that patient gender may be one such factor, where knowledge of its impact can have the potential to assist researchers and clinicians in pre-empting instances of non-adherence and allowing them to monitor patients more closely and intervene in a timely fashion if required. In this article, we explore the issue of gender and nonadherence by examining the findings of studies related to three key disease states. It is apparent that there are variations in research evidence on this topic and that it is likely that other factors such as regimen complexity and patient knowledge interplay and may also demonstrate a larger role in impacting adherence to therapy.