Pediatric T1DM medication adherence drops on weekends, holidays

(HealthDay)—For children with type 1 diabetes, medication adherence is lower during school holidays and on weekends, according to a study recently published in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Catherine Leggett, from Women's and Children's Hospital in North Adelaide, Australia, and colleagues randomly assigned 90 children with type 1 diabetes (mean age, 13.6 years) to electronic monitoring of medication adherence to either metformin (45 patients) or placebo (45 patients) over 12 months. Tablet count was evaluated at three, six, and 12 months.

The researchers found that adherence was reduced during school holidays (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 0.81; 95 percent confidence interval [CI], 0.72 to 0.91; P < 0.001) and during weekends/public holidays (aOR, 0.74; 95 percent CI, 0.69 to 0.80; P < 0.001). There was no impact of adverse effects on overall adherence (aOR, 0.77; 95 percent CI, 0.3 to 2.01; P = 0.6). Adherence was not predicted by age, gender, body mass index, diabetes duration, insulin dose, hemoglobin A1c, or socioeconomic status.

"Clinicians should be alert to this temporal trend when managing children with chronic conditions and develop targeted strategies to enhance adherence during vulnerable periods in these children, improving overall quality of health care," the authors write.

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