Influence of patient training on persistence, compliance, and tolerability of different dosing frequency regimens of bisphosphonate therapy: An observational study in Turkish patients with

Abstract

Objective: In our study, we aimed to evaluate the influence of training on compliance and persistencewith bisphosphonate treatment given on a weekly vs. monthly basis in postmenopausal osteoporosispatients.Methods: A total of 979 patients with postmenopausal osteoporosis (mean age: 63.2± 7.2 years) wereincluded in this national, multicenter, prospective non-interventional observational cohort registrystudy. Patients were randomized into training (n¼ 492, 50.3%, mean age: 63.4 ± 7.2 years) and control(n¼ 487, 49.7%, mean age: 63.0 ± 7.1 years) groups. Patients in each intervention group were givenweekly (44.9% and 44.6% for training and control subjects, respectively) or monthly (55.1% and 55.4%,respectively) bisphosphonate regimens. After the initial visit, patients were followed up at three-monthintervals throughout 12 months of treatment for evaluation of persistence, compliance and adverseevents.Results: On average, 79.4% of the patients were persistent with the treatment with a mean of 350.4 daysof duration during the 12-month follow-up period. The mean compliance in the compliant and fullycompliant group remained at an average of 86.6%. No signiŞcant difference was detected between thetraining and control groups in terms of compliance and persistence. SigniŞcantly longer persistence(360.0± 89.0 vs. 345.0 ± 108.0 days; p ¼ 0.035), higher percentage of persistent patients (83.4% vs. 74.2%;p¼ 0.012) and higher compliance rates (88.8% vs. 83.3%; p ¼ 0.002) were noted in monthly regimenpatients in comparison to those given weekly regimen