AB0362 Non-compliance to classical dmards associated in biological therapy regimes: the characteristics of patients

Background Non-biological DMARDs are important treatment in rheumatic patients that receive biological therapy. In the absence of the first ones the final outcome may be jeopardized despite a full adherence to the rest of regimes. In real practice a patient receive a biological therapy in addition to an existing non-biological DMARD regime, a regime that was not sufficient to control the disease. However the patient is not always informed enough to understand the important role of a treatment that was not so good in the past – non-biological DMARDs. That explains why some patients reduce their classical DMARDS usage; is important to know better their profile in order to focus the efforts in their education. Objectives To characterize the profile of the rheumatic patient with impaired adherence to non-biological DMARDs during mixed (biological and nonbiological) treatment regimes. Methods In a focus group exercise we defined several characteristics (of the rheumatic patient) that could impact the adherence to non-biological DMARDs. We selected education, income, total number of distinct drugs used daily, perceived effect of previous regime, perceived effect of new regime to be analyzed in addition to regular patient’s characteristics (sex, age and living area). A structured questionnaire have been developed and delivered to 50 rheumatic patients consecutive admitted. Statistic analyses have been done with SPSS 16.0 Results We split the lot of responders in highly adherent (HA) group – no or just a few doses of nonbiologic DMARD not used and poor adherent (PA) group – many to all doses of drug not used. The sex ratio was different in HA group (female: male ratio was 6:1 in HA and 10:1 in PA, p