Text messaging and remote monitoring can aid adherence but not blood pressure control
WEDNESDAY, Oct. 2, 2019 (HealthDay News) — Interactive interventions to improve medication adherence do not improve blood pressure (BP) control, according to a study recently published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.
Shivan J. Mehta, M.D., from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues randomly assigned 149 primary care patients (aged 18 to 75 years) with at least two out-of-range BP measurements in the previous year to usual care, electronic pill bottles for medication adherence monitoring, or bidirectional text messaging for medication adherence monitoring.
The researchers found that at the four-month follow-up visit, mean change values in systolic BP were −4.7 mm Hg in usual care, −4.3 mm Hg in the pill bottle group, and −4.6 mm Hg in the text group. The two intervention groups did not show significant change in systolic BP compared with the control group, nor did the two intervention arms differ from each other.
“Adherence to prescribed medications was not improved enough to affect BP control or it was not the primary driver of poor control,” the authors write.
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