Abstract
Consistency between the health care professional's recommendation and the patient's actual behavior (drug adherence) is essential to the success of the treatment. Factors affecting adherence include the ones related to the patient, health condition, health system, pharmacotherapy and socio-economic factors.
Diabetic patients are characterized by high level of non-adherence, mainly due to frequent occurrence of comorbidities and complicated drug regimens. As with other patients, the high-risk drugs include statins, antihypertensive medications but also some antidiabetic medications.
The following review presents methods of measuring adherence, including their specifics, and summarizes adherence studies of the most common drug groups used by diabetic patients, comparing oral and injectable drugs. The paper mentions specific factors that reduce adherence of diabetic patients, as well as possibilities of improving medication adherence of the high-risk patients.