Kuzey Irak'taki Romatoid Artrit hastalarında ilaç uyumu ve ilaçla ilgili sorunların değerlendirilmesi

Objective: With Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) being one of the most challenging diseases to manage Drug Related Problems puts further obstacles in the way of reaching the goal of treatment. This study aims to detect and identify DRPs as well evaluate the adherence of patients with rheumatoid arthritis to their medications in Erbil, Iraq. Materails and Methods: The present study was conducted in two major hospitals in North Iraq. A cross-sectional multicenter design was adopted enrolling 203 RA outpatients from February 15th until June 1st, 2023. Medication adherence and drug-related problems were assessed using the Medication Adherence Report Scale 5 (MARS-5) and relevant RA and medication therapy guidelines. The DRPs were categorized using the PCNE Classification of Drug-Related Problems V9.1. Statistical analysis was carried using SPSS V.26. Binary logistic regression analysis was performed in order to identify variables associated with the disease activity score and p-value of < 0.05 was considered to be statistically significant. Results: Among the 280 visiting outpatients, 203 were eligible and included; 91.1% of the patients were female. The mean (±SD) age of the patients was 51.9 ±12.3 years. Only 36.45% of the patients were found to be adherent to their medications. A total of 423 DRPs with an average of 2.08±1.46 problems per patient were identified. Calculated DAS-28 showed 40.39% of patients were with high disease activity, 35.46% with moderate disease activity, 9.36% with low disease activity, and 14.78% with remission. Conclusion: medication non-adherence, female gender, and presence of DRPs were found to be strongly associated with the worsening of the disease activity of RA patients. These findings along with a high prevalence of DRPs and nonadherence were found among the RA patients. Keywords: Rheumatoid arthritis, Adherence, drug-related problems, disease activity score (DAS-28).