Doctors urging
heart patients to "keep taking the tablets" would have a more success if
they used a new combination medicine known as a polypill, according to
research published on Tuesday.
An international trial
involving 2,000 patients found a four-in-one pill from Dr. Reddy's
Laboratories Ltd significantly improved adherence compared with asking
people to take their tablets individually.
There
were also small but statistically significant improvements in blood
pressure and cholesterol levels among those on the polypill, which
combines aspirin, a statin to fight cholesterol and two medicines to
lower blood pressure.
Dr. Simon
Thom of Imperial College London, who led the study that looked at 1,000
patients in India and 1,000 in Europe over 15 months, said the polypill
offered a low-cost way to improve treatment by making it simpler for
patients to stay on therapy.
Poor
drug compliance among those at risk of heart disease is a major problem,
as people often do not feel any symptoms from their condition and so
forget to take their medicine.
Average
adherence to treatment after 15 months was 86 percent in patients
taking the polypill against only 65 percent among those on the separate
component drugs. The impact was most noticeable among those with a
history of poor compliance, where the adherence rate was 77 percent
compared with 23 percent.
The study results were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The
drugs found in the polypill are prescribed separately to millions of
patients worldwide and are known to cut the risk of disease, fuelling a
debate as to whether they should be routinely combined into a single,
cheap treatment.
Heart specialists gathered at the European Society of Cardiology annual meeting in Amsterdam had differing views.
sk factors," said Dr. Koon Teo of
Canada's McMaster University, who sees considerable potential in the
approach. "Compliance and costs, for some poorer economies, are key
benefits."
But other heart doctors
said using a fixed-dose polypill would reduce their flexibility to
treat patients by adjusting the type and dose of medicines according to
their individual needs.
Several different versions of heart polypills are being tested in a variety of clinical trials.
SOURCE: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/03/us-heart-polypill
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