Adherence to Treatment by Initial Antihypertensive Mono and Combination Therapies

Abstract Background Aim of our study was to compare adherence to antihypertensive drug therapy between newly treated patients in whom monotherapy or a 2-drug single-pill combination (SPC) was initially dispensed. Methods The 63,448 residents of Lombardy Region (Italy), aged 40–80 years, who were newly treated with antihypertensive drugs during 2016, were identified and followed for 1 year after the first prescription. The outcome of interest was adherence to drug therapy that was measured according to the “proportion of days covered” (PDC) criterion, i.e., the ratio between the number of days in which the drug was available and the days of follow-up. Patients who had a PDC >75% and