BACKGROUND: To appropriately manage uncontrolled hypertension, clinicians must decide whether blood pressure (BP) is above goal due to a need for additional medication or to medication nonadherence. Yet, clinicians are poor judges of adherence, and uncertainty about adherence may promote inertia with respect to medication modification. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to determine the effect of sharing electronically-measured adherence data with clinicians on the management of uncontrolled hypertension. DESIGN: This was a cluster randomized trial. PARTICIPANTS: Twenty-four primary care providers (12 intervention, 12 usual care; cluster units) and 100 patients with uncontrolled hypertension (65 intervention, 35 usual care) were included in the study. INTERVENTIONS: At one visit per patient, clinicians in the intervention group received a report summarizing electronically measured adherence to the BP regimen and recommended clinical actions. Clinicians in the control group did not receive a report. MAIN MEASURES: The primary outcome was the proportion of visits with appropriate clinical management (i.e., treatment intensification among adherent patients and adherence counseling among nonadherent patients). Secondary outcomes included patient-rated quality of care and communication during the visit. KEY RESULTS: The proportion of visits with appropriate clinical management was higher in the intervention group than the control group (45 out of 65; 69 %) versus (12 out of 35; 34 %; p = 0.001). A higher proportion of adherent patients in the intervention group had their regimen intensified (p = 0.01), and a higher proportion of nonadherent patients in the intervention group received adherence counseling (p = 0.005). Patients in the intervention group were more likely to give their clinician high ratings on quality of care (p = 0.05), and on measures of patientcentered (p = 0.001) and collaborative communication (p = 0.02).CONCLUSIONS: Providing clinicians with electronicallymeasured antihypertensive adherence reports reduces inertia in the management of uncontrolled hypertension. TRIAL REGISTRATION: NCT01257347; http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT01257347 KEY WORDS: uncontrolled hypertension; medication adherence; clinical inertia; randomized clinical trial.
Summary
Given the rising risk of extreme weather caused by climate change, enhancement of abiotic stress resistance in crops is increasingly urgent. But will the development of stress‐resistant cultivars come at the cost of yield under ideal conditions? We hypothesize that this need not be inevitable, because resistance alleles with minimal pleiotropic costs may evade artificial selection and be retained in crop germplasm.
Genome‐wide association (GWA) analyses for variation in plant performance and flooding response were conducted in cultivated sunflower, a globally important oilseed.
We observed broad variation in flooding responses among genotypes. Flooding resistance was not strongly correlated with performance in control conditions, suggesting no inherent trade‐offs. Consistent with this finding, we identified a subset of loci conferring flooding resistance, but lacking antagonistic effects on growth. Genetic diversity loss at candidate genes underlying these loci was significantly less than for other resistance genes during cultivated sunflower evolution.
Despite bottlenecks associated with domestication and improvement, low‐cost resistance alleles remain within the cultivated sunflower gene pool. Thus, development of cultivars that are both flooding‐tolerant and highly productive should be straightforward. Results further indicate that estimates of pleiotropic costs from GWA analyses explain, in part, patterns of diversity loss in crop genomes.
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