What Are The Ramifications of Suboptimal Medication Adherence?

Zonana: There are several ramifications depending on who you’re speaking with. Particularly, in some therapy classes, depending on the pharmacokinetic profile of the medication, suboptimal adherence may result in drug resistance, which may lead to another therapy being prescribed. In other cases, it may lead to a hospital admission or readmission or an emergency department visit.

In other categories, like in treatment for addiction, it might lead to relapse. So, it costs the system significant dollars and it costs pharmaceutical companies in the way of low persistency curves or suboptimal persistency in adherence that might not lead to the efficacy results that the therapy first advertised after clinical trials.