Adherence to an immunomodulatory therapy still needs to be improved in MS patients. We analyzed the data of 396 MS patients of 40 German MS outpatient centers who had stopped an ongoing immunomodulatory treatment. Items analyzed were among others adherence data, reasons for the interruption and willingness to start a new therapy. It became obvious that 74.6 % of the patients made the decision to withdraw from therapy on their own. The most commonly mentioned reasons for the withdrawal were proven or putative lack of efficacy (51.4 %), side effects (58.1 %), and complaints of fatigue and depression. There was no difference concerning sex, duration of the treatment and medication taken. The expectations correlated with the empathy of the treating physician and the setting with MS nurses taking care of the patient. A total of 199 patients (51.8 % of the females, 48.9 % of the males) wanted to restart another IMT. Reasons for not wanting to restart were lack of conviction that a therapy may influence the disease (29.4 %), fear of injection (18.7 %), fear of bringing the disease to mind regularly (17.9 %) and doubt about the diagnosis (11.2 %). The results suggest that adherence is most effectively promoted by cultivating an appropriate and individual therapeutic setting for each MS patient on a medical, organizational and last but not least psychological level.
Why would you stop taking a drug,? It doesn't work, you feel like crap because of side effect and that took me two seconds of thinking. So we have this study that shows that you think the drugs don't work, you have side effects, you are depressed and fatigued, but you'll try again in the hope of finding something that works, but what are the opinions and what makes you not want to do it.
Stopped taking injections because of the reactions. Started on pill,
ReplyDeletestill not sure it is doing any good. Risk of other infections seems to be taking it's toll. When I was on nothing every symptom seemed worse, so I guess it's just the worse of two evils.
My opinion...everyone needs to be on some type of disease modifying drug. No its not a cure...but its the closest thing we have in hopes of stopping or slowing down the disease progression. Whether its injections...pills or infusions....we need to be on something or else WE
ReplyDeleteare determining how disease affects us.