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. 2022 Sep 24;19(19):12101.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph191912101.

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Therapeutic Continuity among Outpatients with Chronic Cardiovascular Therapies

Manuela Casula  1   2 , Federica Galimberti  2 , Marica Iommi  3 , Elena Olmastroni  1 , Simona Rosa  4 , Mattia Altini  5 , Alberico L Catapano  1   2 , Elena Tragni  1 , Elisabetta Poluzzi  3
Affiliations

Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Therapeutic Continuity among Outpatients with Chronic Cardiovascular Therapies

Manuela Casula et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic poses major challenges to healthcare systems. We aimed to investigate the impact of the pandemic on prescription and adherence patterns of chronic cardiovascular therapies (lipid-lowering [LL], oral antidiabetic drugs [AD], and antihypertensives [AH]) using administrative pharmaceutical databases. For each treatment, two cohorts of prevalent cases in 2019 and 2020 were compared. We evaluated the percentage change in dispensed packages and treatment adherence as a proportion of days covered (PDC). For all therapies, an increase was observed during March-April 2020 (LL: +4.52%; AD: +2.72%; AH: +1.09%), with a sharp decrease in May-June 2020 (LL: -8.40%; AD: -12.09%; AH: -10.54%) compared to 2019. The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on chronic cardiovascular treatments appears negligible on adherence: 533,414 patients showed high adherence to LL (PDC ≥ 80%) in January-February 2020, and 2.29% became poorly adherent (PDC < 20%) in the following four-month period (vs. 1.98% in 2019). A similar increase was also observed for AH (1.25% with poor adherence in 2020 vs. 0.93% in 2019). For AD, the increase was restrained (1.55% with poor adherence in 2020 vs. 1.37% in 2019). The rush to supply drugs at the beginning of lockdown preserved the continuity of chronic cardiovascular therapies.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; adherence; cardiovascular diseases; chronic treatments; prescriptions.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors declare no support from any organization for the submitted work; no other relationships or activities could appear to have influenced the submitted work. M.C., F.G., M.I., E.O., S.R., M.A., E.T. and E.P. report no disclosures. A.L.C. received research funding and/or honoraria for advisory boards, consultancy, or speaker bureaus from Aegerion, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Genzyme, Mediolanum, Merck or MSD, Pfizer, Recordati, Rottapharm, Sanofi-Regeneron, and Sigma-Tau. GC received research support from the European Community (EC), the Italian Agency of Drugs (AIFA), and the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR). He took part in a variety of projects that were funded by pharmaceutical companies (i.e., Novartis, GSK, Roche, AMGEN, and BMS). He also received honoraria as a member of the Advisory Board from Roche.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Fifty-two-week trends in chronic therapies dispensing in the population expressed as the number of dispensed packages per 1000 patients. (A) Lipid-lowering drugs. (B) Antidiabetic drugs. (C) Antihypertensive drugs.
Figure 1
Figure 1
Fifty-two-week trends in chronic therapies dispensing in the population expressed as the number of dispensed packages per 1000 patients. (A) Lipid-lowering drugs. (B) Antidiabetic drugs. (C) Antihypertensive drugs.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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