PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE AU - Veronika Rauscher AU - Matthias Englbrecht AU - Désirée van der Heijde AU - Georg Schett AU - Axel J. Hueber TI - High Degree of Nonadherence to Disease-modifying Antirheumatic Drugs in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis AID - 10.3899/jrheum.140982 DP - 2015 Mar 01 TA - The Journal of Rheumatology PG - 386--390 VI - 42 IP - 3 4099 - http://www.jrheum.org/content/42/3/386.short 4100 - http://www.jrheum.org/content/42/3/386.full SO - J Rheumatol2015 Mar 01; 42 AB - Objective. To test medication adherence using the Compliance-Questionnaire-Rheumatology (CQR). Methods. Invitation letter and CQR were sent to 240 patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Followup CQR was sent 3 months later. Adherence was evaluated using CQR 80% cutoff scores. Results. Seventy-eight patients who were being treated with disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs provided full information on the CQR at both points in time. Eleven patients (14.1%) were classified as adherent based on taking compliance (TC), with only 3 patients (3.8%) adherent in regard to correct dosing (CD) [followup: 13 (16.7%) and 3 (3.8%) for TC and CD, respectively]. Nonadherence was not related to disease activity or side effects. Conclusion. We demonstrated low adherence, suggesting differences between doctors’ records and patients’ practice of antirheumatic drug therapy.