Low adherence to AH agents is correlated with a higher risk of vascular events, hospitalization, and greater healthcare costs. An increased level of adherence to AH agents should provide a better health status for individuals and a net economic gain.

No abstract

We have previously shown that the Nichols assay for intact parathyroid hormone (I-PTH) reacts with a non-(1–84) molecular form of PTH. This form behaves as a carboxy-terminal fragment and accumulates in renal failure, accounting for 40–60% of the measured immunoreactivity. We wanted to see whether this was a common event with other commercial two-site I-PTH assays. We thus compared the ability of three commercial kits [Nichols (NL), Incstar (IT), and Diagnostic System Laboratories (DSL)] to measure I-PTH in 112 renal failure patients and to detect hPTH(1–84) and non-(1–84)PTH on HPLC profiles of serum pools from uremic patients with I-PTH concentrations of 10–100 pmol/L. The behavior of synthetic hPTH(7–84), a fragment possibly related to non-(1–84)PTH was also compared with hPTH(1–84) in the three assays. The I-PTH concentrations measured with the three assays in the 112 uremic samples were highly related (r2 ≥ 0.89, P <0.0001), and the values measured with NL were, on average, 23% higher than IT. Values measured with DSL were 23% and 56% higher than IT for values less than and more than 40 pmol/L, respectively. The three assays detected two HPLC peaks on four different profiles corresponding to hPTH(1–84) and non-(1–84)PTH. This last peak represented 36 ± 8.4% of the immunoreactivity with NL, 24 ± 5.5% with IT, and 25 ± 2.8% with DSL (NL vs IT or DSL: P <0.05). These differences were confirmed by a 50% lower immunoreactivity to hPTH(7–84) compared with hPTH(1–84) for IT and DSL but not for NL. These results suggest that most of the two-site I-PTH assays would cross-react with non-(1–84)PTH material, thus explaining about one-half of the 2–2.5 × higher I-PTH concentrations reported in uremic patients without bone involvement than in subjects without uremia.

Background and Purpose-The benefits of antihypertensive (AH) drugs on the risks of major cardiovascular outcomes have been demonstrated in clinical trials. However, approximately half of hypertensive patients do not adhere well to their prescribed AH therapy in actual practice. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of adherence to AH agents on the incidence of cerebrovascular disease (CD) in real-world practice. Methods-A cohort of 83 267 hypertensive patients was reconstructed from the Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec databases. Subjects included were between 45 and 85 years old, initially free of cardiovascular disease, and newly treated for hypertension with AH agents between 1999 and 2004. A nested case-control design was conducted to study CD occurrence. Every case was matched for age and duration of follow-up with up to 15 randomly selected control subjects. The adherence to AH drugs was measured by calculating the medication possession ratio. Conditional logistic regression models were performed to assess the association between adherence to AH agents and CD adjusting for various potential confounders. Results-At cohort entry, the mean patient age was 65 years, 37.3% were male, 8.6% had diabetes, and 19.5% had dyslipidemia. High adherence (Ն80%) to AH drugs significantly decreased the risk of CD by 22% (rate ratio, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.70 to 0.87) compared with lower adherence. Male gender, occurrence of cardiovascular disease during follow-up, and dyslipidemia were risk factors for CD. Conclusion-High